How to Make A Pink Piggy Fondant Cake

It's not easy at all to make fondant cakes.

I’ve seen a lot of pictures of fondant cakes online – they all look so beautiful, in fact too good to be eaten. Hence I thought of doing a simple one for my little one on his birthday too.

Baking the cake itself wasn’t too complicated, but the simplicity of making fondant cakes stops right there. All the steps following cake baking (frosting and decorating) are complicated and require much skillfulness and dexterity. And patience. Some creativity. Some fondant cake making tools. I didn’t have many of these qualities; neither do I have any necessary kitchen tools. My cake suffered a bit as a result. And that’s considering I didn’t do the fondant from scratch…

But I persevered and got to bake this cake successfully twice (phew!), once for my family members (mini ones like those in the pictures here) and once the week before for the little one to celebrate his birthday (the larger lighter pink pig in my previous post). I think my efforts paid off and I was able to put these cakes to good use.

Hope you will like my creation with all the personal touches. Oink! Oink!

Serves: 1 big pig or 4 small piglets
Ingredients
Cake

• Plain flour: 1 3/4 cups
• Caster sugar: 1.5 cups
• Cocoa powder: 3/4 cup
• Baking soda: 2 tsp
• Baking powder: 1 tsp
• Salt: 1 tsp
• Buttermilk: 1 cup, shaken
• Vegetable oil: 1/2 cup
• Large egg: 2
• Vanilla essence: 1 tsp
• Hot coffee: 3/4 cup

Ganache & Fondant

• Large egg: 2
• Unsalted butter: 500g
• Cooled coffee: 3 tbsp
• Cocoa powder: 4 heaped tbsp
• Icing sugar: 4 1/2 cups
• Pink fondant: 200g
• Baby pink fondant: 200g
• Chocolate chips: 12 pieces

Method:

1. Preheat oven at 180 degrees Celsius. Line 2 round 8″ baking trays with greased baking papers.
2. Sift plain flour, sugar, 3/4 cup cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a mixing bowl. Stir to mix evenly. Set aside.
3. Whisk together buttermilk, vegetable oil, 2 eggs, vanilla essence and hot coffee.
4. Fold flour mixture into whisked mixture gently and gradually.
5. Divide mixture into 2 pans. Hit pans on counter-top a few times to get rid of any bubbles (which may lead to uneven rising).
6. Bake 35 min. Leave to cool 30min before turning out onto rack.
7. Beat together 2 eggs, butter, cooled coffee & 4 heaped tbsp cocoa powder till combined.
8. Slowly beat in icing sugar till combined.
9. Freeze 15 min or chill 30 min before frosting.
10. Spread frosting between 2 layers of cake. Place 1 cake on top of the other.
11. Spread frosting on top of and at the sides of the cake.
12. Roll out pink fondant till 3mm thick. Place rolled fondant onto each cake. Press onto cake and cut out extras from the sides using a butter knife.
13. Roll out baby pink fondant till 3mm thick. Shape and cut out 2 ears and 1 nose for each cake. Place these on top of pink fondant.
14. Place 2 chocolate chips at the top of each cake for the eyes. Place 2 halves of a chip onto the nose for the nostril.

Notes:

• I do prefer having the light pink fondant as the main colour of the pig face and the darker one as the ears and nose. It turned out nicer – just like the one that I did for the little munchkin’s birthday!
• The recipe here provides the steps for making 1 standard sized cake (i.e. 8″ to 12″, about 2kg). To make the smaller cupcake-sized ones here, bake the cakes in two 12″ baking trays, and then use a 3″ egg ring to cut out the smaller ones from them.