Making a pink dolphin fondant cake

Our friends have a daughter who wanted a dolphin cake for her birthday, and this is the result. We didn’t take photos of the entire project, but in a previous post about making a Perry the Platypus cake, I go into more detail about the process, including the mixing of the fondant. Our friends’ daughter doesn’t tolerate some artificial food dyes, so, instead of using a 1/4 cup of water when microwaving the marshmallows, we used a 1/4 cup beet juice. It gave us a beautiful pink fondant.

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I started out by creating a drawing in Adobe Illustrator and positioning it on a 13 x 19 inch rectangle to represent the cake board. This gave me a basic idea of how it would look with color, and gave me a goal to work toward.

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Replacing the color with outlines gave me a pattern to print and cut out:

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I needed to plan for the shape of the cake, and how to get the best use of the 9×13 shape. My drawing showed me how to position the rectangle of cake on the board before cutting.

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Once I got the cake on the board, my plan was to put the paper template of the dolphin over the cake and start cutting:

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We didn’t have another rectangle pan so the next large piece would be cut from a 9 inch round cake. There were plenty of cake pieces left over to make the small part on the tail:

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To make the “actual size” pattern, I needed to print the image onto 3 pieces of 8.5×11 paper that I could tape together and then cut out. This was my pattern for cutting the cake.

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Once the cake was in position on the board I started cutting. It helps if you have a sharp serrated knife. I used a Cutco petite carver, but I’m sure there are other knives that would work well.

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I finished going around the pattern for the for this section, but I kept the paper in place so I would know how to position the other pieces. Basically, you need to position cake underneath the rest of the paper and then cut it to shape. You could use a solid rectangle, or you could piece it together like I did.

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Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of the round, but this is how it ended up. I used butter cream in the joints where the pieces come together. I added butter cream under the smaller pieces to keep them in place on the board. With my knife I started trimming to round off the edges and make it more dolphin-like. If your knife is sharp this shouldn’t be difficult. I would remove a bit, step back for a look, remove a little more, etc. I didn’t want to remove too much and then wish I hadn’t, so I went fairly slow.

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Here is closer look.

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Next is the layer of butter cream. I used a butter knife to spread it, but again, I went slow. Also, instead of bringing the knife across, like buttering toast, I pull the knife along the other axis, like it’s a boat on water. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it seems to keep the cake from crumbling off. I also start out with a lot of butter cream on the knife to keep it from dragging. Gradually I would smooth it out.

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We mixed two batches of fondant the night before. It seems to work better if you give it 24 hours to sit. To make the light pink I just mixed some white and pink together.

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I didn’t document laying the fondant this time because I had a bit of trouble and my wife (who would have had the camera) needed to give me a hand. I wanted to lay pink fondant over the entire cake, which I did, but it took me a few tries. Our counter space is limited, so I had some trouble rolling out a large enough piece. Once the fondant was on the cake it wasn’t too difficult to get it trimmed to the shape.

When I was satisfied with the first layer of fondant, I rolled out the light pink and laid it over top. I wasn’t looking closely at my drawing for this step, so it didn’t go exactly as planned. Overall I’m satisfied with the result. We already had black fondant so we used a small piece for the eye.

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