Elmo Cake

Elmo Cake

My daughter's second birthday theme was Elmo.  I decided to make an Elmo cake.  I thought of many different designs but in the end decided that maybe one of the easier and maybe cuter idea was Elmo popping out of a box.

This is the the finished cake with and without a birthday hat.  I think it turned out well.  This was my first time using fondant.  I didn't use it correctly but it still worked.  The entire thing is made of cake, icing, chocolate, and fondant with a few wooden skewers to help keep the cake stable, for the arms, to keep the eyes and nose on, and to hold the "top" of the box open.  The eyes are cake balls covered in white chocolate.  The nose is all chocolate with some icing over it, I put icing over it because I felt it was too small and used icing to make it bigger.   The reason the nose is all chocolate was because I tired using food coloring(a gel type) to make the white chocolate orange.   Adding the food coloring caused the chocolate to get harder and chunky.  I was able to use it like clay so instead of tossing it I formed the nose.  No one ate the nose. For Elmo's fur I used  a Multi-Opening Decorating Tip(grass tip).  I used Duff brand fondant, it tastes alright and may have been better if I had rolled it out thinner.

Elmo before some minor adjustments....

These are pictures of the cake before I made some minor changes.  This one looks like Elmo is on crack/possessed.  I painted the pupil on while the chocolate was still wet and it absorbed a bit.  So later, after the chocolate harden, I painted the pupils again and made them larger like they're supposed to be.  I didn't like the size of the nose so I used orange frosting and covered it to make it a little bigger.  The mouth also seemed off so I patted the frosting down on the bottom of the mouth and painted black food coloring on along the bottom to make it bigger.  I'm very picking and sometimes have a hard time knowing when to stop adjusting things.  I'm glad I made these adjustments and am glad I stopped after that.

I hope to remember to take pictures of the process for my next cake.