Baby Duckie Cake

November 2010 I was asked to make the cake for my friends’ baby shower. One of the hostesses found a seated baby duckie cake in a diaper online as inspiration, so I took that and designed my own with sculpted cake, buttercream icing with marshmallow fondant, modeling chocolate features and diaper pins, and hand-drawn fondant baby blanket. It was adorable and the future parents loved it!

So as not to waste cake, I made four 8″ rounds for the main body, with some of the carving scraps built up into the tail glued together with buttercream, then small round pans so the head started as a smaller cylinder before carving. I used a small cardboard base exactly the shape of the cake and worked on a stand so I could set it on the larger display board later. I’m still not anywhere near an expert with covering cakes in fondant, so I had some seams to cover with decoration, especially the round head!

Once the yellow fondant was all on, I used orange candy melt modeling “chocolate” for the beak and feet, dark modeling chocolate for the diaper pins, colored fondant for the bows and eyes, and let them all dry overnight.

After the features were all dry, I used silver luster dust for the diaper pins, and shaded the beak and feet by painting darker orange food coloring on with a brush. I also made a baby blanket with white fondant for the display board, using food coloring pens to hand-draw the alphabet block design with dots.

I cut a sturdy dowel to the proper height so it would support the head all the way to the base through the cake body. To make sure everything was situated properly, I carefully put the head in place for decorating, took my pre-transport photos, then removed the head to prop up the beak for the royal icing glue to set into the cake head, and for later packing in the car.

Thankfully this was a non-freeway 15-minute drive to the baby shower, so everything went fine! When I arrived at the party, I put the head in place on the dowel, did some minor touchup, and voila, the adorable baby duckie cake!

Click below to view all the photos of the Baby Duckie Cake…