This Penguin Cake was my first time ever trying to decorate a cake like this. A good friend of mine was pregnant, and she loves penguins, so we decided to do a penguin theme for her baby shower.
The cake is just two boxes of yellow cake mix, prepared as package states, and baked in 2 10 X 15 sheet cake pans. I stacked one on top of the other with chocolate frosting in between.
For the actual penguin, I found a picture of penguin that I liked online. I scaled it how I wanted it and then printed the picture off. Placing the paper with the penguin picture on a cardboard box, I used a knife to poke holes in the outline. Then, I placed the hole-riddled paper on the cake and used a toothpick to make the outline on the cake (making the holes in the paper beforehand is necessary to keep from squishing the cake by trying to poke a toothpick through a sheet of paper and into the cake.)
Using a star tip and chocolate frosting (because I hate how black food coloring stains your teeth), I piped the black portion of the penguin. Using the same tip, I piped the white portion using plain white frosting. For his beak and feet, I mixed yellow food coloring with the white icing until it turned orange and again, used a star tip.
For the background (I chose purple because that’s her favorite color, although I intended it to be lavender. I just got carried away with my food coloring). I mixed lavender food coloring gel with white icing and used a knife to frost around the penguin, sometimes having to use my fingers to push the icing where it needed to go. She loved it!
Great job, especially considering it was your first time! Awesome!