Molly the Farmyard Cow Cake Decorating and Baking Tutorial

Paul packs a lot of really useful information into this very first lesson and by the end we are pretty much half way there! In this lesson Paul explains the design and goes straight into carving and then layering, stacking and ganaching the cake. You’ll find the templates available for download in the templates section.

Paul moves onto carving the head and goes for an oval shape. He opts not to turn the cake upside down to carve the other side, as he prefers to carve into the bottom of the cake while it rests on the board to prevent carving too much. This is followed by a rough layer of ganache and allowed to set a little.

Here Paul covers the cake in white sugarpaste. Although you want the cake to be as neat and smooth as possible, there is some leeway in that there will be patches on the cake to cover up any bad bits. Paul works away the pleats by working into them and then finishes off with an acetate smoother.

Paul covers the board in white sugarpaste as well, and debates whether or not to add a green grass effect. He rolls out a large piece of sugarpaste and then cuts it into section, which he then wraps around the bottom of the cake and secures with a little edible glue.

Here Paul adds the ears, horns, muzzle and legs as well as patches. Paul uses spaghetti to support the ears and horns and secures the head onto the body with plastic dowels. The arms are nice and simple and made with large sausages of sugarpaste. Paul then rolls out a thin piece of white sugarpaste and cuts out various shapes to for the cow’s spots and applies them with a little bit of edible glue.

In this lesson Paul focuses on the cow’s spots and goes around the edges with a soft yellow and then goes over them again with a mixture of yellow and brown airbrush colour.

Paul now focuses on darkening the pads on the cow’s feet and and goes over the ears with a darker brown. He demonstrates how to effectively emphasise key parts of the cow’s features. Paul uses a little pink for the inner ear, but alternatively you could use a little pink sugarpaste. Paul explains how important it is for the airbrush work to be neat, as it adds to the cuteness of the overall design.

Here Paul adds a cute bow to the top of the cow’s head and then goes on to cut out the letters for the plaque using a tappit cutter and some flower paste. Just remember to roll out the flower paste very thin and put on a little cornflour to help get the letters out.

In this lesson, Paul adds some pink to the bow whilst protecting the horns with paper. He then adds two adorable little eyes and eyebrows with some black sugarpaste, keeping it nice and simple. Paul then airbrushes the letters with brown airbrush colour and adds them to the plaque with a little edible glue and uses paper to help keep the letters in line.

Can you believe we’re there already?! Wow. So now it’s onto the final details such as adding a little glaze and dots of white to the eyes and just a little bit more airbrush colour around the bottom of the cow and in between the arms. A cute ribbon and little tail are the final finishing touches. For the tail Paul has a clever idea of using the grass tip for the extruder and makes lots of little sausages which are then attached to a larger sausage to create the bushy tail – just like real cows have!

In this lesson Paul shares some other ideas you can use when making this cake to make it unique to you.

We are sure you have some of your own ideas by now and we would love to see them – please share your snaps with us on our Facebook Page!

Here Paul shares some insider information regarding cost of ingredients as well as pricing and much more. Vital information for any professional cake designer.