Cow Cake. (August 2002)

Jean at Fantes has a sister who really likes cows. So she asked if I'd make a cow cake and some cow cookies for her (she'd seen the Christmas Cow Cookie I made Ron a while back). I agreed, although I was admittedly a little nervous about doing a cake for Jean--if it didn't turn out well, i'd never be able to go back to Fantes again!

Jean got me the cake pan she wanted me to use; it's one of those pantastic pans, made of white plastic, but you can bake them in the oven. Pretty cool. They work well, and they're much cheaper than the metal wilton pans.

The cake is yellow, and I used Earlene Moore's buttercream recipe, which has a little cream cheese in it. I used vanilla instead of butavan, tho. (in case you were wondering, it's pronounced byoo-ta-van. she talked about it some at the ICES convention in Nashville last month. it's a strong butterscotch flavor, and she uses it in EVERYTHING, she said.) The black icing is the same recipe, but I added some Valrhona cocoa until it was chocolatey enough. Delish. (it doesn't get better than Valrhona cocoa, people.) And then I added black food coloring to make it dark enough to use for the outlining and for the spots.

The cow bell, the udder, and the hooves were all molded from candy coating directly in the cake pan itself. Adds a little color and a different visual texture, which i think is nice). The grass was done with a 233 tip and leaf green coloring.

Problems: No problems at all, really. I was really happy with this cake. And so was Jean, btw. She even gave me a kiss! :)