circus carnival cake with handmade fondant lion topper

Sometime last year, I received a request for a circus carnival cake for a baby's first birthday. Doan, the baby's mother wanted a lion topper on the cake, and a colorful circus themed border on the cake. So based on the sample pictures that she had sent me, I came up with this cake!

For the lion topper, I decided to do something in the same style as the giraffe topper that I had made for this giraffe baby shower cake. So first I tinted my fondant using golden yellow gel-based food coloring, and then shaped out the various lion parts that I would be needing - a torso, back legs, front legs, and a head.

Then I added ears, a white snout, used a black edible food marker to add eyes and a nose, and then used a flower shaped cookie cutter to make the lion's mane out of orangey-brown tinted fondant.

After attaching all the parts (with a toothpick in the center of the lion to hold the head in place), I added a cute little tail.

And a cute little fondant lion was born!

For the cake, I baked 1.5 batches of vanilla cake (recipe in my book!) into two 10-inch round cake pans, and  I sliced each cake layer in half horizontally to give me four cake layers. Then I filled each cake layer with freshly whipped cream and fresh strawberries.

After all the layers were assembled, I let the cake chill in the fridge while I whipped up two batches of cream cheese buttercream. I set a bit of the frosting aside (to be tinted various colors) and then tinted the majority of the frosting with Americolor royal blue. Then I used the blue frosting to do a crumb coat and a second coat over the tops and sides of the cakes, smoothing it out each time with an offset spatula (and chilling in between coats).

Then it was time to decorate! For the colorful beaded border I used a Wilton #12 tip, which I also used to pipe large polka dots all over the sides of the cake (and later smoothed them out with an offset spatula). The final touch was to add the birthday boy's name in big red letters using a Wilton #3 tip.

And then it was time to add the fondant lion, which I attached using a bit of frosting on the bottom of the fondant figure.

Happy happy birthday, Roland! Hope you enjoyed your cake! :)

circus carnival cake with fondant mustache baby topper

Remember this chevron baby gender reveal cake that I did for my friend Monica? Well when it was finally time for the baby shower last fall, they asked me to make the baby shower cake as well! The shower was going to have a circus theme, so Monica sent me a pictures of of circus cakes that she wanted me to replicate. The two main attractions of the cake would be the toppers - one would be a fondant baby with a mustache, and the other would be a fondant lion.

For the fondant baby, I shaped the baby's head and body out of fondant colored with ivory gel-based food coloring, and also rolled out pieces for the arms and feet. For the diaper, I rolled out a long strip and wrapped it around the baby.

And for the face, I used food markers to draw on the eyes, mustache and smile. 

For the lion, I colored fondant with orange and golden yellow food coloring, and then rolled them out. For the head I used a circle cookie cutter, and for the man I used a flower cookie cutter, but for the rest I just used a knife to cut out the shapes that I needed (the bangs, tail, ears, etc).

The cake itself was a chocolate cake, filled with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. You've seen me do this several times before, so I only have an instragram photo of this part :)

The top tier of the cake was a 6-inch cake, which I covered with cream cheese buttercream.

I used this basketweave tip to pipe circus-like verticle stripes with red frosting.

The bottom tier was a 10-inch cake, which I covered in blue cream cheese buttercream, and then piped a rainbow border along the bottom of the cake. (I originally only did red, orange, yellow, and green, but it ended up looking more "candyland" than "circus", so later on I also added blue to the border).

To support the top tier of the cake, I used five bamboo skewers - four of them were cut to the height of the cake for the top tier to rest on, and the fifth was full length and would go through the center of the top tier, to ensure that it didn't fall or slide off.

Then I piped large rainbow polka dots to the bottom tier, before assembling the tiers and adding the toppers. (I also added a little curl to the top of the baby's head, at the request of the mom-to-be!)

When I went to deliver the cake to the baby shower, I was blown away by all of the circus-themed decorations - everything was so adorable! From the mustache tablecloth, to the giant marquee circus letters at the dessert table, the circus-themed games, photo booth, and table decorations, everything looked perfect!

Congratulations Sofi!

carnival birthday cake - red velvet cake filled with cream cheese frosting and topped with cream cheese buttercream

To go along with the carnival animal cookies that I made in my previous post, I also made a 12 x 17 inch red velvet carnival cake.  The only other time I made a cake this large was the Superman birthday cake that I made for my son Matthew, and for that cake I had used four 9 x 13 inch cakes (two side-by-side, and two on top of that for the second layer).  But I was hesitant to do that again, since I felt like I could see a line down the middle where the two sets of cakes met.  So this time I bought a 12 x 17 inch cake pan, so that I could make it the right way!

(Notice in the picture above the size of the 9 x 13 inch pan is on the left, compared to the giant 12 x 17 inch pan on the right!)

I thought since I had the right pan this time, that everything would go smoothly.  But since the pan was so large, I found myself extending the baking time over and over again so that the middle of the cake could finish baking.  When the middle was finally done and the cakes came out of the oven, I could already see that the edges of the cake were overdone, and even looked crispy!  So after the cakes had cooled, I sliced off about half an inch of cake from each of the edges.

After sandwiching the two cake layers with a thick layer of cream cheese frosting, I whipped up a cream cheese buttercream to use for the crumb coating and decorating/piping.  I basically made a buttercream frosting, but added a stick of cream cheese to it because I prefer the flavor of cream cheese to buttercream, but I knew that a straight cream cheese frosting would not hold up on a cake this large (another lesson learned from my Superman birthday cake!)  So this was a way to get the same stiffness of a buttercream, with a little bit of cream cheese flavor.

After applying a crumb coating over the whole cake, and a second coating over the top of the cake, I started to decorate my sides.  I was inspired by the red and yellow stripes of Martha Stewart's carnival cake, and thought the look would go perfectly with this cake.  I had brainstormed different ways to make the carnival stripes, but in the end went with the original idea (see below, my brainstorming sketches for the cookies and the cake).

Next, I piped a shell border along the bottom and the top of the cake, and then I was ready to add the final touches to the top of the cake.

To tie in with the animal cookies, I used black icing and a star tip with various colors of icing to pipe the face of a giraffe:

an elephant:

and a lion:

And finally, I added a birthday message with black icing.  I had originally also wanted to include fondant stars on skewers or florist wire, but in the end I left it out because I didn't want to clutter the cake.  Instead, I bought a little star-shaped candle to go along with the cake (not pictured).

Hope you had an awesome first birthday Jianna!

circus carnival animal cookies - giraffes, lions, and elephants

My friend Cindy has a friend Michelle who was planning a carnival-themed birthday party for her daughter, and she asked me to make cookies shaped like animals for the party favors.  After a few emails back and forth, I decided on making elephants, lions, and giraffes.  (Luckily a few months ago I had purchased this animal cookie cutter set, so a variety of different animals were at my fingertips!)

After baking and cooling my cookies, I set out to decorate the cookies with royal icing.  I decided to pipe the elephants in blue, and after the first layer of icing had dried (overnight), I piped on eyes and ears and outlined the elephant for the finishing touches.

For the giraffes, I piped them in yellow, and while the icing was still wet I dropped in some brown royal icing for the spots.  Then after all that had dried, I piped on the eyes and a yellow outline.

The lions were also piped in yellow, and after they dried overnight I piped on a bright orange mane, eyes, and outlined it in yellow as well.  For the mane, I couldn't decide between a curly-Q mane or a solid filled-in mane, so I ended up doing both!

I loved all the colors of the final result!  Stay tuned for my upcoming post on the carnival cake that I made to go with these cookies!

*** Update: The carnival cake post can be found here!