Part 2: How to Make a Standing Owl Cake

If you missed it, be sure to check out How to Make a Standing Owl Cake, part 1. In that post, I shared about how to assemble and stack up the cakes to get the basic owl cake.  In part 2, I’m going to share the major components for decorating this cake.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• fondant for the main owl color (pale blue in my case), plus white, yellow, black, brown, and orange.
• supplies to roll out fondant (I prefer The Mat)
• fondant smoothers
• pastry wheel or pizza cutter
• sugar glue and a small paint brush
• small skewers (to attach the beak and hat)
• egg/oval cookie cutter (for the eyes)
• small round cutters (for the eyes)
• gum paste veining tool
• daisy cookie cutter
• rice cereal treats (for the hat)
• small floral wires (for the hat)

Step 1: If done with the same dimensions as my cake, it will be around 10-12″ tall, so you’ll need to roll out a large circle of fondant, at least 24 inches in diameter. Then lift it and drape it over the standing cakes.

Step 2: Using your (dry) hands and/or fondant smoothing paddles, begin to smooth out the fondant, from the top down to the bottom. I like to smooth down a couple of inches at a time, all the way around (on a turntable) and keep working my way down until it’s finished.  When it’s smooth all the way to the bottom, use a pastry wheel to trim it even with the board.

Step 3:  Now you’re ready to start decorating. First up, for the owl’s belly, roll out some white fondant and cut a circle approximately 5-6 inches round. I used a small Pyrex bowl flipped over as my guide. Attach it to the bottom half of the ball with sugar glue.

Step 4: To add the wings, roll out the blue fondant (or the color to match your owl) and use the same round cutter or small bowl as a guide to cut out the wings, except don’t cut all the way around, but instead cut it into a teardrop shape:

Step 5: Attach the wings on either side with sugar glue. Be sure to slightly overlap them on either side of the belly.

Step 6: Use a Jem Tool #12 to make impressions on the belly to give the appearance of feathers. If you don’t have a tool like that, you could also use round frosting tips and push them in halfway.

This is what the Jem tool looks like on the end – I’m not sure if there’s another name for one of these:

Step 7: For the owls head, the first thing to make now is the ears. Roll out a rope of fondant… pretty thick – maybe an inch around. Cut two sections, just over an inch long, then roll them into balls.

Step 8: Using your thumb, make an impression in the enter of the ball, then begin to shape it so that there’s a point at the top and it’s flat on one side. When I get the shape close to what I want, I use a ball tool to make a really smooth even impression for the inside of the ears.

Step 9: Use sugar glue to attach the ears to the top of the head on either side.

Step 10: Roll out white fondant and cut out large ovals for the eyes. I used an Easter egg cutter for these:

Step 11: Using yellow fondant, make the beak. It should be cone-shaped. After it’s shaped, place s small skewer into the flat side and use sugar glue on and around the skewer.

Step 12: Use sugar glue to attach the eyes, then the beak to the center-front of the cake.

Step 13: Using black and green fondant, finish the details on the eyes with small round cutters. Use tiny balls of white fondant to give the eyes a little “sparkle”.

Step 14: I don’t have pictures of this step and it is optional, but at this time, I used brown fondant to cover the board around the owl and used a gum paste tool to make it look like wood grain.

You can see a tutorial for how to do a similar technique here except I did the wood grain in a circle around the cake instead of in straight lines underneath it.

Step 15: Use orange fondant and flower cutter to cut out the feet. Place them directly onto the board or on the “wood grain” if you do that step.

I also used a “1″ cutter from this Fox Run Numbers cutter set for the number on his belly and funky alphabet cutters for the lettering around the cake board.

Step 16: For one final detail, I made the party hat from rice cereal treats, then once it was hardened, I covered and decorated it with homemade marshmallow fondant.

The tassels sticking out of the top were small floral wires covered in fondant and after it was finished, I attached it to the cake with a small dowel rod.

And that’s it! I think I covered all the details and I was really happy with the way it all turned out:

To go along with this cake, I also made a tiny standing owl smash cake and some owl cupcakes. You can see them and lots more pictures of the finished cake over at RoseBakes.com.

Happy Caking!

Rose