Elephant cake

I’ve been working on a few new cake projects and totally spaced out and forgot to post about this little cute pile of chocolatey goodness.

A baby’s first birthday is a very special occasion, but this also happened to be my best friend’s baby boy’s first birthday, so it had to be perfect (or as close to perfect as I could get).

My friend and her hubby love them some chocolate, and the baby boy’s favorite toy is a stuffed elephant, so the design and flavor choice was a no brainer: chocolate cake, filled with chocolate buttercream and covered with chocolate ganache.

I drew a rough template for the elephant shape and started by cutting the ears out of grey fontant, because they had to dry out for a few days. I cut two layers for each ear, placed a couple of cake pop sticks near the edge and sandwiched them together with a bit of water.

I baked three 6-inch round cakes, sliced them into layers and utilized the humps for the domed cake layers on top of the elephant’s head and body. I also cut out two small rounds for the back legs and two slightly curved oblong pieces for the front legs.

For the filling, I made a big batch of chocolate ganache, reserved about half for the final frosting layer, and mixed the rest into a batch of italian meringue buttercream.

For the head and body of the elephant, I prepared two separate cakes. I filled the layers with my chocolate buttercream and started carving a domed shape with a small serrated knife. It would have been much easier to stack the two cakes (it also would have helped round out the head) but I had no space in my fridge (oh, the joys of working out of your home kitchen!), so I crumb coated the cakes separately and applied a final frosting layer.

To camouflage the cake board supporting the head, I placed it in the freezer to harden, rolled out a piece of grey fondant and placed the cake on top before covering the actual cake with more grey fondant and smoothing out the edges where the fondant meets. After that, it was just a matter of stacking the head as you normally would any tiered cake: I added dowels for support and glued the head on top of the body using buttercream.

I repeated the same process for the legs, which is a bit trickier because of the odd shape and size, and glued them onto the body using more buttercream. I molded a piece of grey fondant into the shape of the elephant’s trunk and glued that onto the cake using buttercream and a couple of cake pop sticks for support.

Finally, I made two balls of black fondant for the eyes and added the ears in place and voila, a cute elephant cake for an adorable little boy!

About telethonrunner

I watch copious amounts of TV and write about it. I also watch movies and am ridiculously addicted to cooking shows.

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