The Final Peppa Pig Cake

This weekend fast approached and I needed to make a cake for my niece's 2nd birthday, all the preparation and practice was coming down to this final product.

I had a few problems with my Peppa shape sinking slightly so I read about this and discovered that if I make her early and leave her to dry a little then this might solve the problem, therefore, I made Peppa and George on Wednesday before everything else and left them in an airtight container in the fridge.

To make Peppa and George, I started off by colouring the icing to a pale pink using my paste colours. I then made 2 balls, different sizes and carefully shaped these into Peppa and George's faces, having done this before it wasn't too difficult. I then coloured 2 further balls of icing blue and red for the bodies. I decided I wasn't going to try and make feet as I didn't know how to make them strong enough so we'll pretend that the feet are in the puddles. I also added some pink arms and a tail to the body and used edible glue to stick these on, great idea as it held so much more firmly.

Peppa and George ready for detailing.. 

Ruined Peppa

Finished Peppa

Then came the difficult part, the details on the face, I started with colouring a deeper pink circle for their cheeks and stuck these on with glue. Then I did made small white balls for the eyes and stuck these on. Using a toothpick I dotted a small black eye on both. And then came the painting, I diluted down some paste with water but the first time my mix was too runny and I ended up ruining my Peppa, therefore I quickly made another one and reduced the amount of painting I would do. I used one of my new tools to make nostrels for her and painted in those and just dotted some on for George. Finally I painted on a small mouth on both.

As you can see from the pictures I also made a 2 out of some icing which I coloured yellow, this was just an easy sausage folded onto itself and carefully proportioned in order to create an image.

Next step was to make the cakes, due to my current sickness issues I needed help at this stage from my wonderful husband. I instructed him to make a normal sponge by adding 600g of flora, sugar and flour together, mixing and then adding 6 eggs. Once the mixture was lovely and light he split it with 1/4 in one bowl and 3/4 in the other. We added cocoa to the 1/4 and pink colouring to the remaining 3/4.  These were then layered into 2 different cake tins, a larger and smaller one. Normally I would have liked to have cooked 4 layers here but we don't have the tins so we had to make 2 larger cakes to be sliced later. We used a toothpick to create a marbling effect and hoped it would be better than last time due to the ratio of dark to light. The cakes were cooked until pulling away from the sides of the tins and a knife was coming out clean, and then left to cool overnight.

Next day my husband cut the cakes into 2 for me down the centre and levelled them out ready for the final decorating stage. 

Cakes are halved

And level.

Together we made some raspberry buttercream and then formed the cake. Buttercream went between each layer and around the outside of the cake. We coloured a block of icing green  and this was to cover the whole cake. Unfortunately this fell apart and so the surface of the cake wasn't very smooth and became patchworky but we didn't have time or energy to try again so left it. I cut out some muddy puddles for the top of the cake from brown icing and stuck these on with edible glue. Using pink icing I cut out Keira's name and stuck on the outside along with some butterflies to try and cover the bumps. 

Cake is iced and named

Muddy puddles

Close up..

Finally once we reached the house, using cocktail sticks, Peppa and George were placed on the top. The cake was complete. 

The finished cake

Close up Peppa and George

Slightly different angle

The marbling on the inside came out much better this time so I've learnt that the lighter colour needs to be a much higher ratio than the darker. 

The cake is sliced and here's the inside

A bit of artistic photoing from my hubby!!

My verdict is that it was ok but I would have preferred to get the icing better as I think this spoilt the finished product, I would also have liked to have letter cutters for the name