Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Purple Hippo Cake Tutorial

Since my wonderful husband is a welder/fabricator, he can make pretty much any cake stand I need in order fulfill an order. I can take an order, and then figure out how I am going to make it come to life afterwards.  I am lucky in that way.

The purple hippo cake was for a little girl's birthday that liked hippos, the color purple, and dance, so, naturally we came up with a purple ballerina hippo. The challenge of this cake was support since the middle portion of the hippo would be the widest and would be resting on two smaller legs. Well, my husband came up with a great support structure to hold all of the cake in place. He made a support pole that ran through the entire cake for stability, and then plates of aluminum in between to hold the middle section and the head. The legs were made of rice cereal treats and formed around the center support pole all the way up to the first plate.


Then, the cakes were stacked, carved, and iced on top of the support plate. This process takes a little bit of precision; since the plate that supports the head needs to be screwed into the support pole, the cake needs to be carved to look proportional.


This picture shows the support plate for the head, in place, and covered in fondant.


The head was also made out of rice cereal treats and covered in fondant.


The arms were again made out of rice cereal treats and covered in fonadant, then attached with dowels into the side of the cake.

Here, I am adding the finishing details to the cake!



Here is the finished cake! I am pretty happy with how the cake turned out! Next time, maybe I will try to challenge myself by making the hippo pirouette. Although this stand was custom made by my husband, it could have easily been made by a trip to the home improvement store. If you have any questions about this stand, feel free to ask! Hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

5 comments:

Ariana said...

This cake is adorable! Thanks for showing the construction process!

Jenniffer said...

I found your blog through the Cake Central forums. This cake is SO cute!!

Pria said...

This cake is WOW !..

I need to make something similar and I wanted to find out how you attached the head support to the centre support ? I am assuming the centre support was hollow and not a solid piece of metal...

Samantha @ Food Fitness Family Friends said...

Hi Pria
thanks for your comment! The support structure for the hippo was made by my husband. He is a welder so he welded a bolt to the inside of the hollow pole. If this is not an option for you then you could use a wooden support pole and use a nail to hold the head support. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Anonymous said...

Cute cake. Thanks for the instructions and pictures. Kathy