Owl Cake!

We just had my daughter's Owl & Art party so it's time to start posting some pictures!  Here is how the cake turned out!

This cake is made with 4 eight inch round cakes stacked together with chocolate buttercream in between.  The layers were yellow and chocolate.  The outside of the cake is frosted in buttercream.

I do best when I have something to look at so...This is the cake I got my inspiration from.  

(You can check it out here...http://www.loveemsweet.com/blog/?p=137)  

Obviously it's made by someone who knows a whole lot more about baking than I do but I still thought I could take inspiration from this fondant covered cake.  I thought it was so cute!  If I could do half as good a job I knew my daughter would love it!

Before layering my cakes I sliced off the tops to level them.  Next I stacked them with chocolate buttercream in between.  For the top layer, I curved out the middle to make the swoop.  I didn't think it was deep enough so I added some of the pieces I had sliced off the tops of the cakes.  This built up the ears on top.  It looked horrible but I knew it would all be covered with frosting so I went with it.  I slathered the ear sections in frosting (like glue) and then I put a crumb coat over the entire cake and put in the refrigerator for about half an hour.

Next I used Wilton tip 81 to create the purple feathers on the bottom.  I started at the lowest point and made my strokes upward.  Then I did the next row of feathers on top of that, layering them upwards until I reached the height I wanted.  Then I took my pink frosting and used the same method (bottom to top) only this time I used Wilton tip 12.  I squeezed a glob of frosting and simply swooped up and tapered off.  I ended up using Wilton Candy Wafers for the wings.  I just stuck them in the sides of the cake until  they looked about right.  I also used yellow candy wafers for the feet.

The last part was adding the face.  I used a round drinking glass to make indentations for the eyes then I filled in the circles with white frosting.  Next I smoothed the white frosting out the best I could.  I added purple circles on the eyes, then outlined everything in purple and added lashes.  The beak is orange buttercream piped on then smoothed out.  The last thing I did was add a little dab of white to the eyes and it was finished!  My daughter loved it and it was a big hit.