Yup! Made for my very close friend (who’s obviously very passionate about penguins) and her twin brother (unfortunately several thousand miles away). I’ve only known them since… hm… all my life – I was almost two years old when our parents first became friends and the then-crawling duo invaded the house, only to spend our entire childhood adventuring together… I *think* she liked her cake very much!
I intended to make 30 penguins, but realized cake was too small to support so many – plus at 2am, that sounds like an impossibly numerous waddle… I made two batches of my flourless walnut cake recipe (by my friend’s request) in 10-9-8” layers, about 1.5” thick. First, about 1/3 of each layer was cut to make another layer, then each layer was torted under an angle similar to the topsy-turvy cakes, for the slope effect of a total of 6 layers in 12 tortes (whew, did I get all those numbers right?). There was a small setback mid-way though the assembly, with the top 6 tortes sliding off as a whole from the bottom group, but such sliding disasters usually prove quite agreeable after sticking butter-based filling in the fridge for a few minutes! Swiss meringue butter crème snow – can you tell I was out of white fondant?!
I had a blast making those little penguins. They’re not hard at all, but they are time-consuming. I’ve seen several penguin cakes and fondant/gum paste penguin figures on my favorite cake website, so I took ideas from there… Each penguin starts as a black ball, gently rolled to shape. Eyes are a heart-shaped white cutout, with black straw-cut tiny pupils. Noses are little tiny dark orange cones. Belly is a white ellipse. Wings/flippers are two leaf-shaped side cutouts from a circle. Feet are also a heart-shaped cutout, in pale orange. Then hats, scarves and earmuffs are just pure fondant fun! I prepped everything first, then just used egg whites to glue the pieces together – line production rules! When deconstructed like this, anyone can make a little cute penguin!
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