Hello again ๐
Another post, another topic! So, you may not know but I love cooking and baking and most of my friends and family tell me that they love my cakes.
Due to my sister’s birthday and her love for elephants, I had the idea to give her an elephant shaped cake for her birthday. I thought that it would be rather simple to do it, just bake it, cut it and finish with sugar paste on top.
Although this was not the first cake where I used sugar paste, this was my first solo experience.. and what an experience!
So, the departure point was to bake the cake. I decided to go for an simple cake without any specific flavor. I used this recipe, but since it’s in Portuguese here is the translation:
- Ingredients:
- 10 eggs
- 300 gr of sugar
- 200 gr of potato starch
- Pre-heat oven at 180ยบC. Oil a cake pan with butter and line it with parchment paper.
- Beat the yolks with the sugar for about 15 minutes, or until they have tripled in volume and are whitish.
- Beat the egg whites.
- Mix a 1/3 of the whites in the egg yolks, beating until homogeneous. Mix the remaining whites, carefully, using a spatula.
- Sift the starch over the dough, gradually, mixing gently and gently so as not to break the whites.
- Pu the dough in the cake pan and bake for about 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out dry.
- Remove from the oven and let it cool completely on a pastry rack before deforming.
This is the simplest cake ever and I did use it without any filling but if you want you can cut it in half and fill it with Nutella or custard cream, just to sweeten it up a little bit more.
Now, here comes the hard part. I had to draw the elephant on a sheet of parchment paper first to make sure it would fit on the rectangular cake I had, but if you are a design expert you may just go free without the drawing first.
So if you use the drawing first technique, you have to fix the sheet on top of the cake with toothpicks to be sure it doesn’t move at all. Then, just use a knife and start cutting around the drawing but always make sure that you are also cutting the top half of the cake and that the drawing is being marked on it. After you are completely sure about the shape of the cake, cut everything out and perfect all corners until it is ready to get the sugar paste.
About the sugar paste you can either buy it on party stores or make it yourself at home, but I went for the first one. I got grey, white and black for this cake and sure it was enough. First, you start to stretch out the paste as much as you want but I did make it very thin since when it’s more thick it is just too sweet for me.
After stretching as you want, just carefully place the sugar paste on top of the cake and start shaping it around the cake (check on YouTube some videos with detail on how to cover a cake with fondant). Cut the ear of the elephant on what’s left of the sugar paste/fondant and design the eye, mouth and tail.
To keep everything together you can use a sugar syrup or small amounts of condensed milk and I assure you that nothing will fall apart! Here is the final result!
XOXO,
S.
The purple elephant is so adorable. I will definitely not feel like eating it but preserving it. Hehe.
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Hey Sona ๐ since the birthday girl loves elephants I even thought about doing another simple cake just to prevent in the case she didn’t want to cut the elephant but everything went fine ahah xoxo S.
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Ah, what a lovely idea! I must admit, if I had to draw the elephant, mine would look nothing like yours. Well done, it’s great.
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Awww so cute! Also the Portuguese make the best pastries! I ate so many when I visited Lisbon.
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That’s look interesting and yummy . The figure of Elephant will make the kids love it . Thanks for sharing
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This looks amazing! I just hard a revelation reading the last part — NOW I KNOW HOW THINGS ARE KEPT TOGETHER hahaah! I didn’t know
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Hey there Vlad ๐ I got to the part where I had to keep everything together and all that went through my mind was “S***t!!! what am i going to do now?” and google saved me ahahah xoxo S.
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Wow, that cake looks amazing. I love all the details that bring it to life.
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Great idea and a great cake. Thanks for tips and sharing your post. I am not much of a baker!!
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Very lovely recipe, might have to try this out one time. Perfect for birthdays!
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This cake is so cute! Perfect for a kid’s birthday party.
Michelle | She’s Not So Basic
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This elephant shaped cake looks great to give as a birthday gift to my neice,i will try to make it .. thanks for sharing this idea.
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very interesting ! i love the idea of this cake ! thanks for the share of recipe
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What a wonderful gift to give your sister! I love the elephant cake .. he’s absolutely adorable. Especially with his big floppy ears and nestled in a sea of pretty candies. Nicely done! x
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That is such a cute cake, almost too cute to eat! I hope your sister enjoyed it and had a lovely birthday.
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The cake is so cute.
It’s good to give this cake as a birthday present.
It’s not so difficult to make and it looks very yummy *-*
I would like to do this cake but I’m not so good at baking.
Bye :*
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Your elephant cake just looks amazing! I love to bake, but I definitely wouldn’t be able to make anything as fab as this ๐
Louise x
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looks lovely. I’m not very good with cakes but I want to try once maybe I will start from elephant:)
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I don’t work well with fondant. It is always a challenge for me. I will still try though. The elephant cake looks so cute. Maybe we can try it with different animal shapes too. ๐
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Wow, this is so Interesting and a Yummy cake I’m sure kids would really love this. Glad that you share this idea
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