As promised yesterday, here are more details on the Doctor Who Dalek Cake.  You know I’m a big believer in showing you that YOU can make a really cool cake, and I do one every year for the Boy’s birthday.  Past years: Angry Birds cupcakes, Dragon Cake,  Perry the Platypus Cake, and Clone Trooper cupcakes.  So, today I’ve promised some of the details of how to make this cake yourself.  Tomorrow I’ll try to get up some of the decor, and a wrap up :)

By the way, these techniques can be used to make any kind of Robot like cake, not just Dr. Who themed Daleks :).

This cake is really make in two parts.  The Daleks on top are ‘toppers’  and they are put on the cake at the end of the process.  They aren’t made out of cake, but
they are (almost) completely edible and tasty.  This makes everything much
simpler, as you don’t need to be able to store a really tall cake like this, and you don’t have to worry about it getting messed up before presentation.  I created the base and the toppers separately, and just assembled it the morning of the party.

So what are the Daleks made out of?  Well, the main body is an ice cream cone, the head/neck is chocolate, and it’s decorated in candy and fondant.  Neat huh?

Here are some action shots!

So, first we’ll talk supplies, then  how to construct your Dalek body, then how to decorate it, and then I’ll go into the cake base.  So let’s begin!

The Dalek Cake Toppers: Ingredients/Supplies

Makes 4 Daleks.

What you’ll need:

• Cake Ice cream Cones (like these).  I used the Publix brand, the ‘jumbo’ size which is a little larger than standard.
• 1 batch Marshmallow Fondant(Hint, use small marshmallows, and reserve 4-6 for future use.)
• 1 package White chocolate flavored candy coating
• Spray Food colour (I used Wilton Master Color Mist Food Color Spray in Silver.  If you’d like your entire dalek in metallics or black, you could get gold, black or other colors as well.  I just used the silver for accents. )
• Food coloring.  For mine I used some bright colors and black – these are good (Wilton Primary Candy Color Set)
• Icing (whatever you used to frost your base cake – you’re just using this for glue in a few places, you don’t need much).

Supplies:

• Clean styrofoam egg carton (or something similar to the shape of egg carton cups- used as a mold for the dalek head – you could also use a candy mold)
• Toothpicks (I used colored round ones)
• Microplane Zester/Grater (optional, but useful)

Candy I used – you can substitute similar:

• Mike & Ike (Tropical Fruit) (8)
• Dum Dums (4)
• White Tic Tacs (8)
• Melted chocolate
• Candy Dots on Paper (a bunch – 128 individual dots)
• Trader Joe’s chocolate Callets (you could probably substitute a similarly sized wafer cookie for this)
• Small marshmallows (4-6)

Prep Work – Dalek Bodies

Fondant:

We’ll be using Marshmallow fondant for this cake, and I’ve gone over how to make it and work with it in previous tutorials, so I’m not going repeat myself here.  Here’s all the details on how to make up a batch: Marshmallow fondant .   Do this the night before.

Split up your fondant (use a scale to make it easier, you’ll need about 2 oz for each dalek body/head, in the colors of your choice).  Go ahead and knead in your food coloring to the desired color for each 2 oz ball.  You’ll also need a ball of gray fondant (black foodcoloring) (maybe 3-4 oz).   Save the rest for covering the cake, and making up for mistakes.

Using paper, make a template for the top and bottom grey strips.  You’ll want a width of about 1/2 in for the top strip, and around 1 in for the bottom, but since cone sizes vary, templates help.

Roll out the gray fondant thinly, and use your template to measure and mark out the strips (4 of each size) on the sheet of gray dough (but don’t cut out yet).  You’ll probably want to add a 1/2 inch to the length of the strips to allow for shrinkage or sizing mishaps, particularly if you’re doing this over several days.  Spray the gray dough with your silver spray.  Remove the excess-even if it has silver on it, and knead back into a ball for later use.  Once the spray dries, cut out your strips.

Cones:

Melt your candy coating according to package directions in a tall cup.  You’ll be dipping your cone into it, so plan accordingly size wize. Dip each cone to cover the outside, and let dry.  The coating doesn’t have to look perfect, but it should be relatively smooth.

Head bases:

You’re going to use a styrofoam egg carton as a mold.  Pour a spoonful of your leftover candy coating into 6 cups (4 dalek heads plus 2 spares), to about 1/2 inch.  You’ll want the diameter of the exposed candy to be approximately the same size as your neck wafers.  You can trim later if necessary, but get as close as you can.  Refrigerate, and after the candy is solid, you can use your microplane to smooth up the top, and to flatten out the bottom to size as necessary.

Dots:

My dots were going to be silver, so I needed to spray them with silver spray.  If you spray them while still on the paper, they are much easier to do, but be aware, you’ll waste more spray with overspray.  If you peel them off, however, the force of spray can knock them around though.  I decided to use half yellow dots and half blue dots, figuring that if the spray didn’t completly cover, I’d have a consistent color.  (I used the yellow on the yellow & orange daleks, and the blue on the other 2).

“Neck” Chocolates:

Stack 3 chocolate callets, gluing them together with icing (reserve some from frosting the base cake).  Mist the stack with silver spray.

Assembly

I recommend doing 1 full Dalek first, so you can get the technique down, then doing the remainder assembly line style.

Assembling the Body.

Roll out one of the colored pieces of fondant, and using ~3/4 of it, cover your chocolate dipped cone.  You can trim off excess at back and bottom, I didn’t worry if I had a seam in the back.

Place one of the wider silver strips on the bottom of your cone, just under where the ridge is.   Orient the strip so that the ends will meet on the seam side of your colored fondant.  Use water to adhere to the colored fondant, tucking the edges under the bottom of the cone if necessary.  Overlap the ends if necessary.  BE CAREFUL because the water you are adhering with will cause blotchy-ness on the silver painted side if you touch it with wet hands.

Place one of the skinnier silver strips along the top of the cone, leaving about 1/4 in of the colored fondant showing at the top.  Adhere with water, overlap the ends if necessary.

Adding the Silver Dots

Hopefully, you have room for 4 rows of dots between the top and bottom silver strips.  My first one, the white one, did not – so it only has 3 rows.  I modified strip placement on the subsequent Daleks to allow for 4 rows.  3 is fine too, of course, and is a little easier to do, but I personally liked the look of 4.

Put a small amount of icing in a dish to use as glue.  Using your finger, tap out 1 column of glue dots down one side of the body.  Place a silver dot on each one to adhere it.  Apply another column of Dots on the exact opposite side of the body.  Then fill in the rest of the top row (between your two columns) with 3 Dots, then continue down to complete the side.  Turn over, and fill in the rest of the top row on the other side with 3 Dots, then complete that side.  Let dry, and set aside your body.

Assembling the Head.

Place your molded candy head on top of an overturned shot glass.

Cover with a circle of colored fondant and gently smooth, tucking under the ends.

Use your icing glue to attach the head to the stack of chocolate wafers that make up the neck.  Let dry and set aside.

You’re now ready to add the final touches.

Final Assembly and Decorating

First we have create the eye stalk, the manipulator arm, and the gun stick.

Eye Stalk (make 4 of these):

Melt a small amount (~1/4 c) of chocolate or chocolate coating (you can use the white coating from previous if you like, and just spray it silver afterwards, but I had some chocolate so that’s what I used.)

Cut the pointier end of your Mike and Ike candy (the blue one) off, so you have about 2/3 of the candy left.  Using a toothpick, carefully stab through the center of the rounded end, so you can dip it in chocolate.  Dip most of the way, but leave the rounded end exposed, so you still see the blue.  Let dry.

Remove the toothpick, and reinsert it in the other end.

Use scissors to cut off the end of a small marshmallow, making a disk.  Stab it onto the toothpick and slide up.  Repeat so you have 2 marshmallow disks about a 1/4in from the eye.

Gun Stick (4)

Basically, take a blue Mike and Ike candy and insert a toothpick into the wide end.  I then painted on stripes of chocolate, meeting at the pointy end.  Let dry.

Manipulator Arm (4)

For the arm, My Handy Husband suggested a Dum Dum lollypop, cut in half.  He took a Dremel with a saw blade attachment and cut it, smoothly up any rough edges with the microplane zester. I then turned it cut side down and dusted the outside with silver spray (which was pretty much empty at this point!). If that’s too much for you, you can always use half a round chocolate candy impaled on a tooth pick.

Extra Fondant Touches

Using your leftover gray/silver fondant, add a small pea sized ball in the center front of the head where you’ll place the eye stalk, and a strip with two small balls on the front of the silver strip where the arms go.

Assembly

Using a toothpick to make a pilot hole, insert the stick of your Dum Dum into the left body fondant ball.  Stab the right fondant ball with your Gunstick toothpick.  Both should stick straight out, and will be held in place by the structure of the cake cone.

Wet the end of a tic tac, and carefully press into the head, one on either side, to make the lights.

Then press your eye stalk toothpick into your fondant ball in the center of the head, sticking straight out.

Using some icing, glue the head assembly to the body assembly.  Let dry.

Place your daleks in a cool dry safe place (do not refrigerate) until time to assemble your cake.

The Cake Base

The cake is simple a tall round cake in my example, but you can of course use anything you like, since you’ll be topping it with Daleks.  In fact, feel free to cheat and buy a purchased premade cake if you like–the Daleks are enough work, you won’t feel that guilty!   But me?  I have to make mine, because I just don’t storebought cakes that much.  So I’ll walk you through what I did, and you can modify it to your own needs &/or time constraints.  Note, you should make the cake first, even though it is last in these instructions.

For my cake, I did ‘cheat’ and go for boxed cake mix.  I can (and do!) make cake from scratch, and it’s not significantly harder or more time intensive, but in this case, I was saving my effort for the decorations.  So, 2 boxes cake mix.  I split into 4 layers, coloring each layer differently with candy color, just for fun.

Supplies:

• 2 boxes cake mix plus extra ingredients, baked into multiple layers.
• 1 batch cream cheese frosting (1 pkg cream cheese, 1 stick butter, 1 lb of powdered sugar, dash vanilla extract – combine in mixer and beat well)
• Part of our fondant batch (maybe 12oz?)
• Vanilla Wafers sprayed with gold/silver spray
• Gold food spray

Level the layers as necessary*, then stack and ice each layer with a thin coat of frosting. Don’t worry too much about how it looks, just get it as smooth as you can.  You’ll be covering the whole thing up anyway.

*Now, I was being quick and lazy, and didn’t level off my cakes after they cooked… which you can get away with if you only have 2 layers.  But LESSON LEARNED you really have to level out when you’re stacking 4 layers.  So I had cake failure, when the Crack in the Universe manifested itself on the top of my cake.  

After my cake failure, I removed the top two layers (set aside for later eating, they still taste great!) and replace with another batch of cake.

Let the icing on your cake dry out a bit so it’s not wet to the touch (I waited until the next day) and then you’ll cover the whole thing with your marshmallow fondant.  I colored my fondant with a little bit of yellow food coloring to make it a better base for the gold spray, but in retrospect I don’t think it was necessary.

So, we’re now going to cover the whole darn thing with our marshmallow fondant.  This takes patience and time, so don’t skimp on either.  Role out a thin sheet of fondant large enough to cover the cake (good tips on how to size here), and carefully place centered on the top of the cake.

Gradually smooth out the sides, flaring out the fondant, so it covers without wrinkling.  This is really hard to explain so I just found a good video on how to do this.  Watch this first, then try it on your cake.  Mine wasn’t near as neat as the one on this video, but it was close enough.  I added snake of fondant around the bottom to hide any sins.

I’ve never covered an entire cake in fondant, but it worked pretty well for a first time.

Also, you could just skip the whole fondant thing, and just ice the cake as you normally would.

I then sprayed the entire cake with gold food spray.

Final Cake Assembly

The morning of the party, I used icing glue to attach a row of gold/silver sprayed vanilla wafers to the side of the base cake, just for fun.

Place your Daleks on your cake, pressing into the fondant layer to steady them.

Since the top of my cake was a little bit rounded, I also used a vanilla wafer under the front of each Dalek to level it out.

And there you have it!  The completed Dalek Cake.  If you’re going to try this yourself, please read through all the instructions first.  I’d suggest planning to do this over several days.  Day 1: Bake & ice your cake, and make your marshmallow fondant.  If you have time, go ahead and dip your cones.  Day 2: Do all your prep work.  Day 3: Assemble everything else.

Let me know if you have questions!

Published on: Jun 20, 2012

My dear creative friend, Chad, made this for the Halloween party …  and was kind enough to give us a tutorial, so we can all make our own!

Published on: Oct 3, 2009

The curse of Halloween food blogging is that many of my Halloween delicacies, made up for the Halloween party, are done at the last minute.  So I can’t write them up very well before Halloween, and it seems silly to post the recipes AFTER Halloween.  So I was noticing that some of my really cool Halloween treats are relegated to quick photo posts, rather than giving them the treatment they deserve.  To fix that, here is the ‘how-to’ on my world famous Mozzarella Eyeballs, classy enough for the fanciest Halloween dinner party!

Recipe/Technique: How to make Marinated Mozzarella Eyeballs

Supplies:

• Big firm olives (black & green).  Try the olive bar at your local grocery, or you can go for the canned stuff.  The olives need to be firm, not squishy.  Jarred black olives work perfected fine for the pupil.
• A large diameter drinking straw (I find McDonalds straws to be the perfect size) .
• Marinated mini mozzarella balls.  I get mine at Trader Joe’s.
• Optional: jarred red pepper slices.

My original version of this just used sliced pimento stuffed green olives, but then I saw the Evil Mad Scientists and their Eyeball Caprese, and adapted that technique to my appetizer.  You basically use the olives to make your nice rounded iris and pupil.  For the most rounded, slice of the end of a green olive, then use your straw to punch a hole in the center.  Then slide of a piece of black olive, and use the straw to punch out a plug of black.  Then place the black piece in the hole of your green olive.  If it does stay level with the green, you can use a little cream cheese stuffed in the open end of the olive to hold the black in place.  You can also do slices off the side of the green olive, but be aware they will be slightly oblong.  you can see I did a little of both for mine in the photo.

To tide you over, here are some clever Harry Potter halloween ideas, for those who like to mix their All Hallows with the Deathly Hallows!

A few photos below, then links to those ideas and more under the photos.

Harry Potter Halloween Idea Links:

• Deathly Hallows Dinner Party
• Draco Malfoy Death Eater (More on this with Tutorials to come!)
• Harry Potter Dog Costume
• Edible Harry Potter Wands

• Zombie Harry Potter and Crew
• Butterbeer Recipe
• Hogwarts School Robe tutorial
• Bellatrix LaStrange costume

• Harry Potter Glasses from 3D glasses
• Harry Potter Recipes
• Harry Potter Themed cocktails
• Mad Eye Moody Eye
• Butterbeer Cookies

If you’ve never done a White Elephant Party, I have a write up on how to throw one, with all the rules that we use.

Basically, it’s a gift exchange party where you steal gifts from other people.
A couple of key points you’ll need to make sure your guests understand:
– Gifts can be bought new or regifted (in the true spirit of a white elephant) – we give a general amount to spend (like between $15 and $20 for example) but a regifted gift can be worth more than that.
– Impress on your guests that they must arrive by a certain time. Start the party at 7:00 but tell everyone they must be there by 8:00, for example.
– Everyone needs to bring a gift (not one per couple).
– For maximum enjoyment, we usually instruct people that gifts “can be funny, but not crappy”. I always suggest that if you’re going to regift a crappy gift, at least throw a bottle of wine in there with it!

A couple of other tips:

• As host, I usually have an extra gift on hand for that one person who doesn’t show up with one, or if not needed, provide as a consolation prize for the poor person who ends up with the crappiest gift.
• Decide up front if you’re going to allow collaboration (“you steal from me then I’ll steal from you”) or allow spouses/significant others to steal from each other.

Get all the instructions to throw your own party!.

Get the invitation, a ‘steal sheet’, and numbers on flickr

Go Check out the Star Wars party by Just Jenn.

Here’s one of my favorite party projects, from July 4th a few years ago… Shrinky Stemware Charms made from recyclable #6 plastic (like from to-go containers)!

“For the 4th of July, my husband and best friend were running the Peachtree Road Race, so I decided to have brunch at my house and invite over friends for mimosas and food. Since we were doing mimosas (champagne and OJ for the uninitiated), i figured everyone would be drinking out of stemmed glasses and they’d get mixed up, so what about making some fun, temporary glass markers using shrinky dinks. I made up 6 the night before on a whim, and they were quite loved by all, but the funny part was that the morning turned into a shrinky dink party as everyone wanted to try and make their own (both more glass markers, and other fun stuff).”

Go Read the Whole thing and get the How-to! Shrinky Dink Stemware Charms

Here’s some more cool Independence Day links, too!

• Dessert and Drink ideas for the 4th of July from An Opera Singer in the Kitchen
• Creative July 4th Party Ideas at Tip Junkie
• A Frozen Trio of Red, White, and Blue (sort of) at Perry’s Plate

• Recipe: Coconut Granita with Lychees (she suggests adding red and blue fruit for 4th of July colors!) at Zakka Life
• Mega-crafty’s cupkins for July: Cupkins: 4th of July Red, White and Blueberry Muffins …and Red White and Blue Cupcakes from her partner in crime, Ready, Set, Craft!
• More Cupcakes! Independence Day Cupcakes at Ooh Shiny!

• Lots of Decor and Food Fourth of July ideas from Chica and Jo
• Rhubarb, Blueberry & Cream Parfait From the Chronicle Kitchen
• One Pretty Thing’s Fourth of July Roundup Here, and more 4th of July here!

• July 4 Roundup at Dollar Store Crafts (lots of cupcake ideas…)
• Love this Nautical Crab Boil at Design*Sponge
• Hot ‘n’ Smoky Baked Beans from Niki, here at Foodwhirl!
• And here’s Rawls’ Potato Salad, if you need more food…

And More from Foodwhirl:

• Red, White & Blue Strawberries
• Spotlight: Blueberry Cobbler Bars
• Happy 4th! – Holiday Food ideas… a Foodwhirl Roundup

The menu included Deathstar Cantaloupe, Mr Slushie Dogs, Roast Bantha, and even Platypus Eggs!

(Thanks to the Evil Mad Scientists for the Deathstar Cantaloupe idea!)

(See all Phineas & Ferb Meet the Clone Wars Party Posts!)

Ready to make your Perry Cake?  Really, you CAN do this!

Yesterday we covered all The Prep Work required to make your platypus cake. Now it’s a day or so before you need the cake, and we’re going to put it all together.

You should have:

• 1 frosted flat cake.
• 1 unfrosted loaf cake
• extra cake (cupcakes)
• 1 batch marshmallow fondant
• the rest of your cream cheese icing
• The Supplies from yesterday’s list.

Clear yourself off a good work area, get your fondant out of the fridge, and let’s get to assembly!

1. The Base

You have your sheet cake, iced with your cream cheese icing.  You really don’t HAVE to do anything else, but I’ve found that working on the platypus tends to mess up your icing, so I added jelly beans to hide my sins, and also for additional color.  Any addons to the base can either be done prior to body placement (Step 4) or after.  I did mine after, but if i was doing this over, I would probably have done it immediately before the body placement, after Step 3.

Some ideas

• If you have plenty of extra fondant, use a flower cookie cutter to cut out fondant flowers.  Place them overlapping all around the cake (skipping the very middle that will be covered with a platypus, of course.  (In retrospect, I would have done this.  Fondant circles in various colors and sizes would also have been very cool.
• Cover the entire top with lime green tinted coconut, to simulate grass
• What I actually did:  Cover the ground around Perry with multicolored jelly belly candies (I was thinking they could be platypus eggs!)
• If you have enough extra, roll out a large sheet of colored fondant (any color but yellow or green) and cover the entire top of the cake with it, for an extra smooth look.

2. Molding the bill and the feet:

Marshmallow fondant doesn’t hold shapes as well as regular fondant, so last year when I did the dragon cake, i decided to use something a little stronger as a ‘skeleton’–molded tootsie rolls.  These can also be done ahead of time.  They also will not be seen on the final cake, but should be a light enough color that they don’t show through the yellow fondant that will cover them.

Get out your tootsie rolls.  Break one large roll into several smaller pieces, and microwave for JUST A FEW SECONDS to soften.  You can now knead this in your hands until it’s soft and moldable like playdough.

You’ll be making 2 foot shapes, a top bill shape, and a bottom bill shape.

The foot shape is simple.  Just make a flat 1/2 in thick triangle shape.  Then squeeze it with your fingers toward 1 point to elongate.  Then use your fingers to make ‘toes’ on the opposite flat end.  That’s hard to explain in words, but just look at the picture!

The bottom bill is simply a half circle shape (like a “D”), and the top bill is a larger half circle, with the flat side thicker, coming to a triangular point.  See diagram.  (I don’t have any shots of the bill uncovered, but you can see the shapes in the photos of covering the bill, later on in this tutorial)

Use your loaf cake to help judge the size to make these.  Remember, you’ll be covering them with fondant, so they’ll be bigger later, so make them a little smaller than needed in the final cake.  Set these aside.

3. Fondant:

First, you’ll need an idea of how much to color for each part–this can be trial and error the first time, so here’s a trick.  I’d suggest breaking off a workable size ball of white, and rolling it out to about 1/8 in thick.  You’ll need to knead it a little first to get it workable after the night in the fridge.  See how big it is.  Take your loaf pan (that you used to bake the body!) and use it as a model.  Hold your pan in the air, bottom side up.  Gently drape your test fondant over it, and see how big a sheet you’re going to need.  This is also good practice for how to work with the fondant, before you try it on the real thing!  I found Peggy Weaver’s tutorial on working with the fondant very helpful – go read it!

Once you have an idea how much fondant is needed for your body, make a ball that size, and set aside.  Make another ball that size and set aside for the tail.  Then make 2 smaller balls : 1 for the bill/feet, 1 for the legs.  Finally, you’ll 2 even smaller balls (like a large marble) which will be the black eyeballs and hair, and the white eyeballs.  And you should still have a good bit of left over white–which is good, because if you screw up, you may need it!

• Green:  Take one large ball, and one medium ball and knead together with green (and maybe a touch of blue) foodcoloring, until you get the desired Perry body color.
• Yellow:  Take one Medium ball, and knead together with yellow food coloring, with a few drops of red, until you get the desired yellow-gold color for Perry’s bill.
• Black:  Knead one small ball with black food coloring, for Perry’s hair and irises.  (You may not even need that much, so start small)
• White:  leave white, duh! for the eyes.
• Brown (or Chocolate):  If you have brown food coloring, you can use that.  I didn’t, so I kneaded in melted dark chocolate.  This changes the consistency of the fondant, so if you’re doing that, wait until we get to that step, below!

4. Perry’s Body

Roll out enough of your green fondant to cover the loaf cake (remember, we figured out how much we needed in the prior step!  Save some of the green for the legs.)

The body of Perry is basically just the loaf shaped cake, turned upside down. Round off his body by carving off the  4 top edges with a sharp knife.  Also round off the corners.  Place the cake on top of your upside down loaf pan, to use as a pedestal while decorating.

Cover the top and sides of the cake with a thin layer of icing.  Neatness doesn’t count here, you’re just providing glue and padding for the fondant.

Now, the fun part.  Carefully center the fondant over the cake, like we practiced, and drape over the cake and the loaf pan.  The fondant does stretch, so if you’ve screwed up and your not quite reaching the bottom somewhere, don’t fret.  let gravity do it’s work.  Let sit for several minutes for the fondant to stretch.  (Again, this tutorial is helpful.)

Smooth and stretch the fondant as necessary, trim off excess, leaving about 1 inch or so, which you can then tuck under the bottom of the loaf. A Perfectly Packaged Perry body!

You can now place him on his base.  Remember, you still have to add the bill to the front, so don’t center the body on the cake, leave several inches to add his bill.  The tail drapes off the cake, so no need to leave much room for that.

Covering & Placing the Bill and Feet

Roll out your yellow fondant, and wrap pieces around each of the feet, and the top and bottom bill.  Since the mouth is mostly closed, you don’t have to wrap the whole bill.  For the top bill, just turn the rounded end up a bit to achieve a slightly open mouth. You can go ahead and place the bill on the cake. See photos:

5. Make the Eyes and Hair:

In his platypus state (as opposed to Agent P) Perry eyes a little goofy, with no lids, and look in slightly different directions.

Use a little of your extra cake (the leftover cupcakes) to make a cake ball mixture.  Combine crumbled cake with leftover icing and mix with your fingers until the cake sticks together in a ball.  Make a ball the size of a large marble, and cover with white fondant.  Now make another!  (Note: if you don’t want to do cake balls, you can just use a ball of extra fondant in place of the cake)

Then take a little ball of black, and press flat.  Dampen one side, and press on to your white eyeball.

They are a little to round now, so use a knife to slice off the back 1/3 of the eyeball, so you have a flat side to stick to the cake.  You may want to embed a toothpick in the cake, and slide the eyeball on to that to make sure it stays put.

(I placed mine a little high on his head, I think, so you may want to place a little lower on the front of the face.)

6. The Legs

The legs are similar to the eyes.  Use your cake ball mixture to make the basic shape, then wrap in fondant.  Hide your fondant seam by putting it against the cake body.  Moisten with water or extra icing to stick to cake.  Note, I did his back legs too far forward, the thigh should have been closer to the rear of the platypus.  Place your yellow feet in the appropriate place, as shown.

….

7. The Tail

I didn’t have any good foodcoloring for the brown for Perry’s tail, so I figured why not mix it with some chocolate!  I melted a bar of Hershey’s Special Dark and kneaded it into the fondant the same as you would with food coloring, until I reach a good brown.  This worked, but it also caused the fondant to lose pliability, so it’s a little harder to work with.  Roll out a large piece of your chocolate fondant (either double the normal thickness, or stack two sheets).  cut out your tail shape, then use a chopstick to press a diamond quilted pattern into the tail.  I waited to attach the tail (since it falls off the cake) until i set up the cake for the party.  Just adhere the end to your platy-posterior with some leftover icing (see above photo in the legs section)!

Your Completed Cake

You’re ready to go now… store the cake in some sort of box, not in the refrigerator, but protected from ants and other lovelies.  Place in a cool room out of reach of children and pets.  The fondant will soften overnight, so be much more careful touching it the next day.  And even if it doesn’t come out perfectly (mine had a few flaws!) your Phineas and Ferb loving child with think you are the greatest!

(See all Phineas & Ferb Meet the Clone Wars Party Posts!)

I have a request for the tutorial to make the Perry the Platypus Cake, and since it’s needed in a hurry, I’m doing this tutorial in two parts.  By the way, I did a really detailed tutorial on last year’s dragon cake, and this year’s cake is actually similar, if a little simpler. So it wouldn’t be a bad idea to read through that tutorial in case I miss anything I covered there, as far as techniques.

More pics of the cake and the party here!

We’ll start with the prep work: assembling your hardware, getting the shopping done, and making ahead the components!

Hardware:

• 8.5″x4.5″ loaf pan
• second loaf pan or cupcake pan
• 9×12″ rectangular pan
• Rolling Pin
• Parchment paper (optional, but helpful)
• Large piece of cardboard, covered in foil, freezer paper or other paper, for cake board. ~24″x18″

Shopping List:

• 1 16 oz bag Marshmallows
• 2 lb powdered sugar
• Crisco
• Corn starch
• 1 8oz pkg cream cheese or Neufchâtel cheese
• vanilla
• 1 stick butter
• Pound Cake Ingredients
• Ingredients for base case (1-2 boxes cake mix or your favorite recipe)
• Food coloring (I used this one for the black and the green: Wilton Garden Candy Color Set, and some cheap yellow and red gel coloring.)
• Brown food coloring, or 1 bar dark chocolate.
• Vanilla or other light colored tootsie rolls (our local Dollar Tree had a two pack of the large sticks, which was more than enough)
• Wooden skewers (short ones are fine)
• Candy for base cake decoration (I used jelly bellies, but anything would work.  Green candies or green coconut would make a nice ‘grass’ effect)

Make ahead:

Set out your butter and cream cheese to soften.

Bake your first cake (ours was chocolate!) to serve as the ground that Perry lays on.  I used a box mix for this, and i think 1 box in a 13×9 pan was a maybe a little skimpy.  So you might want to consider making up 2 batches, and using 1.5 for the cake, and doing the rest as cupcakes.  Let cool thoroughly.

Bake your second cake, in a loaf pan, 3/4 filled. (here’s the recipe – with this recipe you’ll have enough for the loaf pan, plus some extra cupcakes) You want it as tall as possible, so err on the side of overfilling (Place a sheet pan under the loaf pan to catch any spillage). Bake the remainder of your second cake batter as cupcakes, or in your second loaf pan.  You’ll need some extra cake later, so save the extras, don’t eat them yet!
I like to use a sling of parchment paper as a liner to ensure ease of removal from the pans.  Just cut a sheet of parchment paper as wide as your pan is long, but long enough so that if set inside the pan, it hangs over both sides.  Spray the pan with non-stick spray, and  press the parchment.  If necessary, secure the sides with binder clips to keep the parchment in place and pressed against the sides of the pan.

Allow cakes to cool thoroughly.

You can go ahead and make up your batch of icing.  I like Cream Cheese Icing — here’s a quick recipe:  Cream together in mixer : 8 oz cream cheese, 1 stick butter (both softened).  Add 1 teas vanilla.  Slowly add 1 lb powdered (icing) sugar.  Beat until smooth.

Place your base cake on the cake board,  and frost the base cake.  Reserve at least 1/3 of the icing for later use.

Make up your batch of Marshmallow fondant and place in the refrigerator, wrapped tightly according to the directions.  Don’t color it yet.

You’re all prepped and ready to go!

Next we’ll assemble and decorate your Perry cake… go here!