Tiger Cake for Hao's Birthday

Hao turned 4 today. Some time last month he had requested for a tiger cake when I asked him what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday. I tried to get him to agree to a lion cake which I have made before. He was reluctant initially but agreed after I told him that the lion would be made of lots and lots of his favourite cream.

Nevertheless, I made some searches on the internet for pictures of a tiger that I could use to make the cake that Hao wanted. Found photos of real tigers on the net but it wasn’t anything that I could use until a friend suggested that I should check out Junglebook’s website. Well, I did find my cartoon tiger from Junglebook, got it printed and was going to make that the top of the cake.

While I was going through some new cake decorating books which I bought recently, I found a tiger cake in Lindy Smith’s Party Animal Cakes. It was a tiger head carved out from 2 9” round cakes, covered with fondant and painted with golden brown and black stripes. It was a very difficult thing to do and I was hesitant. But then I thought, if I don’t try now, when will I have the chance to try?

So I bake 2 cakes and tried to carve the head… it looked very easy in the book but I had a tough time getting the right shape. Now I know why character pans are so popular – you get the shape that you want instantly and there’s absolutely no wastage. I think I carved away ¼ of the cake!

It rain the next day when I was going to cover the cake with fondant. On normal hot days, humidity is high at home and I would need to switch on the air-con whenever I work with fondant. Of course it’s normal to switch on the air-con when it’s hot. But on that day, I had to switch on the air-con even though it was raining cats and dogs outside. The fondant refuse to dry! My neighbours must be thinking that something was wrong with me….

The completed cake didn’t look like a tiger to me but it was acceptable to the birthday boy and his siblings. So there’s no close up picture of the cake here… just the birthday boy and the cake from afar….