Winnie the Pooh in Cake Too!

My second attempt at a three dimensional cake was for my niece's 1st birthday. Actually, her birthday has been one of the driving forces for my cake decorating. Since making this cake, it has been a personal challenge to top the previous years cake with each birthday! The theme for the party was Winnie the Pooh. I knew right away that I wanted to have a 3D Winnie the Pooh on the cake...but how to design it? I spent months preparing for this cake--stacking cake pans, visualizing, searching the internet for a bear shaped cake pan.. It turns out that there is a Winnie the Pooh 3D cake pan, but I came up with another option that cost less. A friend of my sister offered to let me use her CareBear 3D cake pan. Perfect! I needed a lot of cake because this was going to be a large party. So, I decided to use a two-layer, half sheet for the base that I carved into a story book. For a honey pot, I baked two 8" rounds and carved them down to size and shape.

After baking, carving, and filling the cakes, I dirty iced everything including the bear. Later, I decided that it was a mistake to ice the bear because it filled in some of the details that I wanted to show. Too late. The next step was fondant. I had never used fondant or seen anyone in person use fondant before. I had watched plenty of television shows and read internet articles on it. I bought a 5 pound bucket of the fondant at my local cake decorating supply, hoping that would be enough. For those who have never touched fondant, it is a dough like substance that is hard but becomes sticky the more you knead it. The trick to kneading and rolling it is coating your hands and everything in shortening. My arms never had such a good workout until then! It was physically exhausting to knead and roll the fondant. It came in white, so I had to divide and knead in color for honey pot and bear. I made a small amount of purple, red, black, and orange-tan. I attempted to cover the half sheet (book) in one piece, but being inexperienced, I rolled it too thinly and it broke. So, I put the seam down the middle where the pages would join. I took a knife and indented the edges for where the pages stacked on the open book. Covering the bear was incredibly difficult--it was an odd shape, so I had to patch together pieces of fondant. Unfortunately the fondant kept cracking. I think the bear pretty much was covered twice in fondant! The honey pot was the easiest to cover--I turned it upside down and covered from the bottom up, then flipped and covered top down with honey dripping over the sides. I then cut little pieces to make the details--eyebrows, facial lines, nose, eyes, tail, ears, shirt, wording on the honey pot...

Next, I mixed up my decorator icing for piping grass, flowers, and borders. Most of the piping was done on site 1/2 hour before the party because I didn't want it to get damaged in the car on the way to my sister's house. Once I was at the location, I placed plastic dowels in the cake for support for pooh bear and a piece of cardboard for underneath the bear. I carefully set him in place. Then I placed the honey pot in front of him. Then, I piped borders, grass, flowers, and the birthday message. A few plastic bee picks and a candle a top the honey pot, and the cake was finished! It was spectacular!

I also make two little present cakes out of extra cake that I had baked, fondant, and decorative candles and plastic toys. My sister and I decided that it was appropriate to give my niece her own little cake to eat and destroy for her first birthday. Her cake and the honey pot was banana flavored. The large sheet was chocolate. Pooh was vanilla.