I decided to branch out a bit in the kitchen. I’ve made a few fondant fish, and maybe a teddy bear or two, but this week is all about elephants.  Baby animals are the cutest!  Unfortunately, baby animals, of any kind, have a larger head compared to their body size, and this means a little bit more fiddling with your medium (fondant) while it is drying, so it will retain the shape you want.  I got lucky, and found a soup ladle to use to help hold the head of my elephant for a little while during the drying time.  We had to redo the head once or twice – once because the trunk was kinda skewed, and then again because we decided it looked too much like an adult elephant, and not enough like a baby elephant.

It’s terrible to say, but I am glad that I’m done with this cake, because I have scrap-booking plans in the wings that I am eager to get to.  Sad, because I spent several days working on it.   I had already decided it had to be a baby elephant, but I couldn’t just cover the top and sides with elephants, so I thought I’d add some little banners, and after a minor mishap decided I also needed some “buttons” to cover up a little booboo.

Here’s where I started this morning – see how the cake with the stripes very stupidly doesn’t have stripes going across the top?  Not sure what I was thinking when I did this, so the buttons were to create a border.  I made 60 of them (cake circumference was 29+ inches, buttons about 1/2 inch diameter).  The cakes are 9″ and 6″, and about 4″ tall.

Then I realized that my little elephant really needed touching up, so I added a bow to the back to cover up another imperfection.  Funny how much trouble a simple bow was, I ended up cutting out a template to get it right.

Then to make things REALLY exciting, I forgot to take the dowel rods with me & my sweet husband had to bring them to me before I could set it up – which unfortunately was about a 1/2 hour late, since the customer changed the start time of her party from 1pm to 12:30, and didn’t tell me!!  Here’s how it turned out when all was said & done.  (Be gentle with your comments please!  It’s been ages since I worked with fondant & the cake surface is not what I used to be able to do.  I have a lot of practicing to do, to get back to the perfection I was used to.)

Now I can get started on making those scrapbooks!!