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Welcome to howtocookthat.net. Today we are going to look at how to make an owl, a small
one to go on top of a child's birthday cake. This is actually one my 1-year-old's to be's,
one of his favorite toys so I am making some small versions of his favorite toys to go
on top of his birthday cake. So I will just put that to one side as a reference.
And we are going to start with the body. I've mixed the color, not quite all the way through
so it's a little bit marbled because the body is not a uniform color on that, so it will
not be exactly the same but it will be fine. So I will take a little bit separate for the
little ears at the top and then I've got this texture mat, you can buy texture mats for
cake decorating and they are quite expensive to buy. But I've got quite a few of them,
all of these different ones are from a child's rubbings book. I'll put the link to it on
the website. Make it plumper than it needs and when I push the mat down on that it will
go the right, about the right width. This is just giving that texture to it, to look
a bit like the feathers. And as I am doing that I am trying to roughly shape it how my
owl toy is. Straighten on the bottom, that gives us a lot to stand on and then I've got
two ears at the top. Cut it half to make it equal and make the ear shape. I am shaping
it down only because this bit here is sliding down to make sure it sticks and then a little
bit of water on your finger from some water in a bowl and pop that one on. Then I've got
this one, roll it into a ball shaping it down ready to attach, rough it up a bit, a little
bit of water on the finger from a bowl and pop that on there. Now I've got to texture
the ears a bit to make it match, I've got my texture mat and give it a little, a little
push down.
Okay, next we are going to make our beak. I've already colored the fondant. If you don't
know how to color fondant just look back through my videos and you'll see a fondant basics,
one that explains how to color it. I am using a pizza cutter to cut it so it doesn't drag
through and basically just keep cutting until you've got one you're happy with. Now I've
got a line of stitching so I am not going to push all the way through so, just do a
gentle line there and just put that one to one side.
Now he's got a blue tummy. Well his birthday is in a couple of weeks so that gives me plenty
of time to leave these to dry out so then I can just put them on the cake on the day.
I want it to be an oval shape; I am just going to cut that out with a knife. I'm just going
to put a bit of water underneath, not too much and put the owl's tummy on. Just using
the edge of the knife, just very carefully neaten up the edges.
Ok now we want to do the eyes. This one has writing but I am not going to that level of
detail on this because it's for a small one so I am just going to do two eyes, one smaller
than the other. There will be leftover fondant from your different colors, just wrap them
in Glad wrap and pop them in a Ziploc bag and they should keep for quite some time so
you can use them for other projects. We have birthdays in our house fairly close together
so makes it handy for using leftover. Okay, a little bit of water underneath and then
just stick that one on. Roll it into a ball and then squish it through. I'll just reposition
this one a little bit so that they're meeting in the middle. Then I will put the beak on.
Okay now I'm going to do the two little wings on either side. Because we want them to be
equal in size, but we certainly don't want one massive one and one little one so we are
going to start by just making two equal balls. Okay, and then we are going to make, start
the circle, squash it flat and then make it into more of a triangle shape. Squash it flat
again, grabbing a knife- not too sharp if you are doing it in your hand, cut and cut.
Now I am going to just round off those, separate them while you try to round them off, and
then pull them back together. Now we want it to be sitting at an angle like that so
we will put it there and then slice it straight that gives you your angle. And I am not going
to put it on yet because I have to add a texture to that one too. I've got a flowery one here,
just press there and put that one on there. In order for it to sit up like that it is
going to need support while it's drying so the easiest thing to do is get some of your
baking paper and roll it up and just prop it underneath. That just gives it a little
bit of support while it's drying. Repeat for the other one, roll it into a ball, triangle,
squish it flat, cut it into three and cut it so it's on the angle of the body, bit of
water, pop the wing on, roll up some baking paper.
Now to do the eyelashes, you could do them out of black fondant but I think it is going
to be much, much easier to paint on. For this I am just going to use some of the food coloring
that we usually use to color the fondant. Now if you're not confident painting on the
fondant straightaway, just get a spare bit and practice on that first so you know to
practice with how much of the black you need to get on your brush so that you get nice
dark, because you don't want to have to go over it a second time, but you also do not
want too much on your brush because you don't want it really thick. So just experiment with
how much you need. We just want half a circle in this one and then we want a bigger circle
on this one. Then we just want to do some little eyelashes. If you want to make it look
like it is stitched on use a, if you've got a pastry comb just go around the edges, should
you want do it again, you could just do this with a knife it would just take longer. On
his body you can also see he's got some little feather marks, I'm just going to do them gently
with a skewer. It's the little details that make the difference between something looking
ok and looking really good.
So that we can get our owl to stand up on the cake, I am going to stick some spaghetti
straight up the middle and then once he is completely dry and hard, I can shorten those
and on the date I can just push them into the top of the cake and that will ensure that
he will stand up.
Thank you for watching this tutorial. If you enjoyed it, why not click like, leave me a
comment or subscribe to this channel. To see the finished cake, go to howtocookthat.net
The link is in the description below this video. Enjoy!