WHOO's 9th Birthday Cake?

Happy 9th Birthday A!

I received this order from my neighbor, Rachel. It was the easiest delivery ever - walked across the street and knocked on the door. The hardest part was the car that drove past as I was trying to cross the street, though I did have visions of somehow tripping on the stairs and falling and the cake splattering to pieces on my driveway.

In her order, Rachel said she wanted an owl cake, but a very specific type of owl for her daughter's 9th birthday cake. In my mind, I said, "uh oh." Not because I thought she was going to be hard to work with, or she was going to give me hard time. I was getting nervous that her "specific type of owl" was a specific species of owl, like a Canadian Tawny, or an Alaskan Brown Snowy Owl (I just made those up, since everything I know about owls come from watching and reading Harry Potter).

I can understand how children at that age can get stuck on a "thing," so truthfully, I was nervous! But then Rachel texted me photos of these awesome cutie pies! I was quite relieved, "I can TOTALLY do that!" The design was originally going to be a buttercream transfer, but then I thought it would be way better suited to a fondant design. So I ended up with a buttercream frosting with fondant design. She is totally cute!

I had to study the design a little bit, since at first glance, I wasn't sure how to get the white dots on the wings, or how to get the blue stripes on the body.

SO, the dots are painted on with white food coloring (yes, it exists!) And for the blue stripes, hooray for Chef Duff's Cake Grafitti! I have an airbrush, but I didn't have time to figure it out before this cake. Cut out the lines with an Xacto knife, and made a stencil - then spray. I didn't mess up, and only had to do it once. :)

Used my ribbon cutter to make the stripes and placed it on the cake. measured one inch from the circumference, and cut the ribbons, for a nice open surface for our little friend. I'm really happy with the way it turned out!