Elephant Cake

by Emma Drake (Leithfield, North Canterbury, New Zealand)

I made this cake for my sons 2nd birthday. I chose to make an elephant cake for him as it was his favourite animal at the time. He loved pretending to be one by making trumpeting noises.

This was my first experience of covering a cake with fondant so was quite pleased with the outcome.

I used my favourite chocolate sponge recipe and sliced it in half horizontally and shaped it into a dome. I then filled and covered the cake with peppermint buttercream. Then I kneaded and coloured the fondant black, light and mid-purple.

It was a lot of work colouring all of that fondant, the next day my forearms were so sore, so I would suggest using pre-coloured fondant if you wanted to recreate this cake.

I then covered the cake with light purple fondant and shaped the head/trunk, tail and legs out of light purple fondant with white circles for feet and the hair out of mid-purple and lastly the eyes/brows out of white and black fondant as shown in the picture. I attached all of these with just a touch of water.

This cake was very popular with my family and friends ESPECIALLY my son who made lots of trumpeting noises before blowing out the candles.