Adventures in making a beagle cake

My father commissioned a cake for my Grandpa's 89th birthday, requesting it look like a beagle with white, black and brown coloring. My Grandpa, amongst other things, raised beagles a particular being Rockie, which is what we named the cake.

This was quite an undertaking for me as I have never made a 3D cake with and organic shape. I didn't really know where to begin...
I decided the easiest cake to work with is vanilla buttermilk and I like working with Swiss buttercream frosting when the cake is to be covered with fondant (it goes on smooth and never hardens).

I started with three players and started cutting away, hoping for the best.

It must have been hilarious to see me staring at this mound of cake with knife in hand. I hadn't a clue how to continue.

More cutting later and Rockie started to take form...




Did you know dogs don't have shoulders? Yeah, those had to go.



He looked right to me so I moved on to frosting and covering with fondant.



Here he is with some definition but he needs ears and a tail...



There, that's better! And now for some color...



Nice but I think we can do better!



Yup, that'll do it! And because I'm morbid like that, a picture after the cake had been served...



Yum yum! My smart nephew requested the middle portion of the dog. Daddy taught him it's the tastiest part of the animal.

Beagle cake: Vanilla buttermilk cake with Swiss buttercream frosting, covered in marshmallow fondant.

Sheriff Badge Cake

I made this cake for a friend of my sister. It was her son's first birthday. Can you guess the theme of the party?

I'm just going to go ahead and post the series of pictures I have documenting this cake's construction...

I had to (mind you, "had to" for me when it comes to baking, means more like, "got to") buy a HUGE baking sheet the width of my oven. I later found out this sheet allows me to bake 2 dozen cookies at once. Wowsas! Two huge sheets of cake later, a layer of lemon curd and some cutting...



Some frosting...



I think I missed 12 messages while I was frosting this. My friends have to understand that I get into the zone when I'm shaping or frosting.

I colored my fondant silver grey, or what I imagine that color to be. Do you know how hard it is to make grey from gel colors? Black is actually a REALLY dark purple so going with less black gel than you would use to make super black fondant yields something like the color you would imagine Barney looks postmortem. Not pretty and definitely not grey. Luckily, there are many colors of the rainbow to help me out. I covered the star and got something that looked very cement-like, which is cool, I guess.



I cleaned her up a bit and added lettering for our sheriff's badge.



Still cement-like, which is why earlier in the week I bought...



Silver Pearl Dust! Ooh, shiny stuff...swoon!

And now for the money shot...

Yeah, I don't know either.

Because our birthday boy is 1, he had to have his own cake to get dirty with.



Do you know how hard it is to transport one cupcake? I held it the entire way there! (Of course I didn't Mom, I'm a very responsible driver.)

Sheriff Cake: Vanilla buttermilk cake with lemon curd filling and swiss buttercream frosting. Covered in tinted fondant and silver pearl dust.

Cupcake: Chocolate with chocolate buttercream, of course.