Angry Bird Cake Tutorial

This weekend was my Mom's birthday and she asked for an Angry Birds cake.  We chose Stella (Pink Bird) as our inspiration. My sister has been making Angry Birds cakes for a while and agreed to let me photograph and share the process with you.  It was not as hard as I had imagined and all you need is time and patience.

Making the Angry Bird cake Beak and Tail 

The process starts a week before (longer if you live in a humid climate) with the making of the beak and tail.

• You need to use a powdered hardener (Cake Art Tylose Powder) in the fondant. Mix it in well before you add in the coloured powder. 
• Use fondant to form a trapezoid shape out of yellow coloured fondant. Once you have your desired shape use a rolling pin to flatten/neaten all the sides.  Use a pair of kitchen scissors to snip 3/4 way down the beak.  Bend the beak open. We used two cooking essence bottles to support the beak until it was dry.  The completed beak is 2.5" (6.5cm) tall, a base of around 2" and a tip of about 1".  The base of the beak is square.
• Use fondant and colour it black then form a tail (this is where all those years of playing with play dough come in handy!)  After two hours push a bamboo skewer into the tail and two into the beak.  Leave in a dry area to dry and harden.  Do not place in a sealed container as it will 'sweat' and not harden. It needs good air circulation to harden off.

Making the Angry Bird cake body

• We used an 8 inch (20cm) round cake tin. You will need enough round cakes that when stacked are about 8" high.  
• Place two cakes bottom side together on the base, cut the mound off the top one then added the next cake and finally finish with the fourth. 
• Leave the 'mound' in tact to form the crown of the head.  
• Using a bread knife sculpt your cake to form the head of your Angry Bird.

• Make some butter icing  the same colour as the cake you are making add in a little more milk to make it a runny consistency.  Use some of this icing or jam to glue your layers together.  
• Place your sculpted cake on a cake board of your choice. Do a light coating of the mix over the outside of  the cake to seal the sculpted cake in preparation to ice. 
• Make a thicker butter icing (YouTube).
• We used a star tip and pink icing and started at the top of the cake and worked our way to the bottom in a circular pattern around the cake.  To make it easier to ice we placed the cake board onto a container on top of my Lazy Susan. 
• We used a grass tip to ice the grass. (YouTube)

Finishing Touches for the Angry Bird Cake

• Fix the beak and tail onto the cake using the skewers. Using the pink icing ice around the edges to finish off.
• Roll out white fondant icing and using a round wavy 2.5" circular cookie/scone cutter cut out two eyes and place on cake.  
• Mix some black butter icing and using a thin round icing nozzle pipe in face detail. Pipe on the eye and eyelashes. 
• Change to a thicker nozzle pipe on the eye brow.
• For the hair we used a party table center piece which we purchased from the local grocery store in the party section. Using a pencil wrap the wire around to form curls. Remove from it's case and wrap the ends in clingfilm before tying on the ribbon.
• We used two different types of 1" wide ribbon to make the bow. A light pink and a thicker white ribbon. These were layered one on top of the other and tied around the hair. This was then inserted in the top of the cake. Once in the cake the ribbon was cut to the desired length.
• We used pre-purchased royal icing roses and placed these on the lawn around the cake.

Completed product

Enjoy the finished product.
Blessings
Chareen

A little inspiration for you.  Here are three other Angry Birds Cakes my sister made last year.

This post is part of The Schoolhouse Review Crew Blog Cruise : Recipe Share. Take some time and pop on over and be inspired.. and Try a New Recipe Tuesday.