This dog cake was for my daughter’s 3rd Birthday, so only my 3rd B-day cake, but I really get such great inspiration and ideas from this website (like freezing the cake for easier, crumbless cutting). I knew I wanted to do a dog (animals being more forgiving to re-create than a cartoon character!), and liked the ones I saw sitting up.
First I drew the shape of an upright body and leg within a square, then baked 2 square cakes to cut the templates out from (after freezing them), then stuck the 2 body shapes together with toothpicks and home made butter icing, with a leg on each outside (REMEMBER to count how many toothpicks go in to avoid accidents at the party).
For the Head I made a loaf tin cake & cut it down a little, shaping it and cutting a little wedge in the middle to make somewhere for an ‘eye ridge’. For the front feet, ears and tail I used left over cut-offs. I used the left over loaf tin cake for the ‘bone’ with her name on it.
I used that warm apricot spread you put on before applying butter icing, and it makes it SO much easier. This cake turned out much bigger than expected, and though I made double the butter icing it ran out, so always make a lot more than you think you need, as it takes a while to make up (especially getting on to 10pm the night before the party!).
I used an icing bag with a rosette so it looked like fur (it’s less obvious if it isn’t perfect too!), first I did the cream patches, then added brown colour to the icing and filled in the brown patches. I did one front leg cream and one brown to show them up, as there weren’t really any legs there.
I used icing to build up the ‘eye ridge’ a bit more and used blue Smarties for the eyes, with a spot of icing writing on them. Also used pink shop icing for the Dog’s collar and pushed a number 3 into the chest, then put my feet up!.
I was amazed with how well it turned out actually, it was so easy, just time consuming to ice, and my daughter LOVED it, which was priceless, she couldn’t wait to take a big bite out of her doggy’s nose!
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Thank you so much for posting this. I did it for my son’s 2nd birthday. Your instructions were excellent and the cake turned out great. I did end up using Twinkies for the legs! Thanks again!
My daughter asked for a dog as her birthday cake. I had an idea of what I wanted to do and hopped online to see some ideas when I came across you photo/instructions. I had a lot of issues with my cake as I expanded on your ideas. The face fell off twice and I ended up rebaking/sculpting. and then my body fell apart and had to rebake/sculpt. The finished project is rather amazing–Thank you so much.