Giraffe Cake Decorating Tutorial
Ingredients
- 3 Cups Vanilla Frosting dyed Yellow dye it to match the color of the yellow starbursts
- 1.5 cups Chocolate Frosting frosting you have left over from filling and crumb coating your cake
- 28 Tootsie Rolls
- 8 pink Starbursts
- 16 yellow Starbursts
- Powdered Sugar use as needed
Instructions
How to create the giraffe ears
- Warm 8 yellow Starburst to make them easier to work with. Put the unwrapped candies in a microwave safe bowl and microwave them in 5 second intervals until they are easy to mold and not too hot to the touch.
- Knead together the 8 yellow Starbursts to form one candy.
- Sprinkle counter with powdered sugar. Roll out formed yellow Starbursts to inch thickness. You don’t want it too thin. If it is sticky, you can add a little powdered sugar to it.
- Repeat steps 1-3 with all of the pink Starbursts.
- Using the stencil, cut out the shape of the ears to the corresponding color on the stencil. If you choose not to use the stencil, eyeball the shape of the ears cutting out the yellow ear first.
- Cut the pink ear an inch smaller than the yellow.
- Brush a little water to the back of the pink piece and place on top of the yellow piece. The water will act as a glue, holding the pink piece in place.
- On the bottom part of the ears brush a little bit of water, about an inch up.
- Then fold in the bottom corners together and pinch to secure. This gives the ears a 3D effect.
How to create the giraffe horns
- Warm up 8 tootsie rolls same as you did with the starbursts in step 1. Knead to form one candy and then cut it in half. Each half will be one horn.
- Roll out each half like a snake to the size and form to the shape of the pattern.
How to create the snout
- Take the remaining 8 yellow starbursts and 10 tootsie rolls and heat following step 1. Combine them to make a lighter brown color.
- Roll out to an inch thickness. Cut out the oval shape.
- Warm the last 10 tootsie rolls following step 1 and add a little black food coloring.
- Mix together until food coloring is all combined. Roll out to ⅛ inch thick. Cut out the 2 circles (save the remaining rolled out tootsie roll for step 11).
- Add a little water to the back of the black pieces and place them at the top middle of the oval to make the nose.
How to create the eyelashes
- Re-combine the black tootsie roll candy that you saved from step 10 and cut in half.
- Roll each piece to the length of the eyelash stencil and cut off. Make two cuts at the end to form eyelashes and pinch them to be pointy. Do this again for the other eye.
Assemble cake
- Place one of the layers of cake on your cake board and apply a layer of chocolate frosting. Repeat for each layer.
- Apply a thin layer of yellow frosting all over the cake as a crumb coat.
- After crumb coating, put in the fridge to allow frosting to set, about 30 minutes.
- Add your yellow frosting all around the cake and smooth out with a spatula, or a flat surface.
- You can smooth out the frosting more by putting it in the fridge for 30 minutes and then use paper towels to smoothen the surface. Do this by placing paper towel over the top of frosting and rub hand over the paper towel to smooth frosting.
- Pipe on the brown frosting to form the spots of the giraffe. Do not put spots where the face will go.
- Smooth out the frosting. You can do the same paper towel technique to smooth out the spots.
- Add on the nose to the front bottom of the cake where you didn’t put spots.
- Place the eyes above the mouth. Make sure the eyelashes are on the left far side and the right far side of the face.
- Place the ears and the horns on top of the cake. You will need to push them into the cake just about an inch to get them to stay or you can add a toothpick to the bottoms of them.
Notes
Tips – Baking at 300 degrees for a longer period of time makes it so your center of your cake doesn’t rise as fast so you
will have less cake to cut off the top to make your layers level.
-Use parchment paper in the bottom of your pan for easier removal of cake.
-Use a cake board the size of your cake to make it easier to move cake from your work surface to the fridge. Some cake
stands are too tall to fit your cake and stand in the fridge while you're decorating it.
-Use a large ice cream scoop to add your cake batter to the pans.
will have less cake to cut off the top to make your layers level.
-Use parchment paper in the bottom of your pan for easier removal of cake.
-Use a cake board the size of your cake to make it easier to move cake from your work surface to the fridge. Some cake
stands are too tall to fit your cake and stand in the fridge while you're decorating it.
-Use a large ice cream scoop to add your cake batter to the pans.