I was asked by a friend to bake a lizard birthday cake for his son’s birthday. I am a novice cake decorator (the lizard was number 4) but I told him I would give it my best shot. The body of the lizard is sculpted chocolate fudge cake with milk chocolate icing, feet and tail are homemade fondant. All of the details are hand sculpted.
I usually buy the Duff’s fondant, but this time wanted to save some money and try out a marshmallow fondant recipe I found. I figured if it didn’t work I would just run to Walmart and buy some. Fortunately it worked out really well, other than a melting issue in the beginning. Turns out you shouldn’t put fondant on a cold cake, or put fondant covered cakes in the fridge. That was pretty nerve-wracking. But, after sitting him in front of the window for a while, he dried and I learned a lesson, no harm done.
I finished the board with crushed graham crackers on top of a thin layer of chocolate icing to look like sand. Start to finish (not including wait time) total time was around 16 hours.
