Peppa Pig Birthday Cake

In the blink of an eye, my Miss 3 has become Miss 4! My littlest princess is growing up too quickly. She loves to celebrate and a cake is the major part of a birthday where she is concerned. For months she had been telling me she wanted a dinosaur cake for her birthday and I had been quietly planning how I was going to accomplish it. Then one week before her birthday she suddenly decided that she would like a Peppa Pig cake instead and could not be swayed! Not only was it to be Peppa Pig, but a fairy Peppa jumping in muddy puddles!

I hit pinterest and youtube looking for my inspiration. I found one amazing video from a very talented lady that made it look so easy to make a Peppa figurine out of fondant, knowing full well that I have never done this before mine would look nothing like hers, but I had to give it a go. You can find the tutorial that I used here. 

 I used my own Marshmallow Fondant recipe. The body came together well, but I will admit that it took me three goes of making the head before I got it right, plus it was a really hot weekend I was making it and the fondant kept melting in my hands and wouldn’t keep the shape was trying to mould it into. I actually had fun making this cake and the delight and joy it brought my daughter made it all worth while. The funny thing is… as much as she loves birthday cakes, she still to this day has not eaten one single piece of any birthday cake, I thought she may have this time, but no luck, it was polished off by the rest of the family!

To make the actual cake, I used the Marble Cake recipe in the Thermomix My Way Of Cooking cookbook using carob powder instead of cocoa. I left the majority of the mixture vanilla and a smaller amount with carob. Usually you would swirl the two together for a marble effect, but I wanted to try to get an affect of “mud” when the cake was cut. To do this I poured a layer of vanilla mixture into the cake tin then spooned a few large blobs of the carob mixture, topped with more of the vanilla, trying to layer the blobs a bit.

I spread a layer of butter icing over the cake before the fondant. After making the marshmallow fondant, I broke off the amount I thought I would need for each colour, plus a bit extra and kneaded the colour evenly through each piece. For special occasions I love to use the Hopper brand of food colours which are coloured by fruits and vegetables rather than numbers. If you can handle small amounts of salicylates and amines, this is a much better option. I buy mine from Allergy Train.

To make the muddy puddles, I made a half quantity of Marshmallow fondant and added 20g of carob powder with the marshmallows and melted it together before adding the icing sugar. I also used this for the dark part of Peppa’s eyes. For the crown and the wand I used the Hoppers Rainbow Pearls to decorate it.