Abby's Hippo Cake

Ashley asked me to help her make a fondant cake for Abby's birthday. I was so excited, but I have only made one, and that was with a lot of help from an amazing teacher, Karen P. So I decided to practice and I made a bunch of flowers on a circle platter and frosted them in purple, orange and pink fondant. It turned out SO cute, and of course, I lost the photos somehow when downloading them to my comp. So, I have requested any my family has, but we will see if they ever make it here onto this post. Sufficeth to say, it was SO CUTE and I was so proud of it so I felt very confident to help Ashley with her pink hippo with a tu-tu. I thought, "Yeah, no problem." And then we started. It turned out to be a bit more challenging than I expected. First off, we didn't have the right sized pans to make the pieces of cake that we wanted, so we really had to sculpt. So it was hilarious from the start. When we had almost finished, we called our husbands in to take a look at our work and, well, let's just say, they had a "little" constructive criticism for us, meaning we were enticed to do MAJOR reconstructive hippo surgery on the poor guys face. And anyone who knows anything about fondant knows reconstructive surgery is likely to backfire. We cut and sliced and felt like surgeons and stretched the "skin" over the lips once the nose was enhanced, and let's just say that fondant isn't the most forgiving and he ended up looking a little bit more like a stuffed bubblegum pig on a spit than a cute little hippo. Maybe the ears are too big, nose still too small, eyes too big, mouth too black... I don't know, but well, it was a rolling fun time to make it and it tasted great and all of our friends were super supportive and said that it "looks just like a hippo", but we know deep down, that the next time we want to make a hippo cake, we are going to both think again.