Penguin cake

If you’ve known my blog for a while you probably know that I make my kids birthday cakes. My oldest daughter is especially demanding, this year she came up with the idea of the “penguin cake”. And it was up to me to figure out how to make such a cake at home with usual kitchen tools.

It wasn’t difficult in the end and I was able to use our usual sour cream cake. We like our cakes not only pretty but also delicious.

I used ground coconut for the snow and the penguins are made from fondant which I dyed with gel colors. That wasn’t the best of ideas because the gel colors make the fondant pretty sticky and I had to put the fondant in the fridge a lot of times to be able to work with it. Next time I would buy colored fondant or use modelling chocolate.

One of our penguins was taking a bath in a lake made of gelatin.

Ingredients and tools:

• 2 big packs of egg white cookies called piškoty in Czech
• 800g of sour cream
• 800g of full-fat yoghurt
• fruit – my favorite is mixture of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries
• powder sugar
• 300g of ground coconut
• modelling chocolate or fondant – white, orange and black
• a little gelatin – blue or even clear but then you’ll need about 2 drops of blue gel color
• cake springform with removable sides- diameter 24 – 26 cm
• cake springform with removable sides- diameter about 10 cm

How to do it

Cake

In a bowl, mix sour cream, youghurt and add sugar to taste. First put a layer of cookies on the bottom of the springform and cover it with the cream mixture.

Add another layer of cookies and cover with cream.

Replace the next layer of cookies with the fruit and again, cover with cream.

Keep adding cookies and cream.

The last layer should be cream.

Do the same with the smaller springform, just don’t put any fruit in the smaller cake. Let both cakes rest in a cold place for at least 8 hours. The take the small cake out of the form and put it at the edge of the bigger cake. Then take a spoon and dig a hole next to the small cake. That will be your penguin lake.

The cake mixture you dig out will come between the hole and the small cake.

Smoothen it with a spatula to create a slide.

Cover the whole cake with ground coconut.

Prepare a part of the gelatin and pour it into the lake. Let it set.

Penguins

Start with the black modelling chocolate, make small rolls which you then put standing on the working table and push a little to make their bottoms flat. With your thumb and index finger create the tails.

Turn the roll with the tail away from you and make a flat oval shape which you place on the penguin’s belly. Then make 2 flat white circles for the eyes and in the end two tiny black balls which you push a little into the eyes to make pupils.

Then make two black oval shapes which grow pointy towards one end, those will be the wings. You can make the wings touching the penguin’s body or moving.

Make two small flat ovals for the feel and a round pyramid for the beak. If you want the beak open, just cut halfway through it with a knife from the top.

Penguins on the cake!

Place one of the penguins standing on the gelatin and prepare the rest of the gelatin. Wait until it’s cooled down but still liquid and then fill the lake. If you pour hot gelatin into the lake your penguin will melt.

Place one of the penguins on the slide – I chose the one who looked the most excited about the ride!

And you can let the rest of the penguins just play around the cake.

Serve the cake cold and enjoy!

Few more photos for you: