Bulldog Cake - Nashville Birthday Cake

Happy Sunday!  And happy holidays to all my readers!

I got to make my first yule log cake this week!  The kitchen looked so festive as I was decorating it.  I got a little crazy with the edible glitter, so it looked like it had snowed all over the floor too......oops. 

The yule log was made with a delicate vanilla sponge cake, filled with a fresh raspberry mousse, and frosted with dark chocolate ganache.  I had to...ahem..."taste test" one of the ends I cut off and it was delicious!  The berries, holly leaves, and pine boughs were handmade out of white modeling chocolate, and the white buttercream was dusted with edible glitter so it sparkled like real snow!

"What does all that have to do with a bulldog cake?" you are probably asking yourself...well nothing really.  I just love the Christmas holiday and wanted to share a little of my Christmas joy with you!!

So, now back to the regularly scheduled programming.  As the blog title would suggest, this week's actual featured cake is not the yule log, but a sports cake featuring an awesome bulldog!

One of my favorite parts of creating cakes is working with the client to design the cakes....and this cake was no different.  Debbie wanted a football themed cake that was a real guy's cake.....a growling bulldog, a football and helmet, and sports logos from all the teams for which "Mr. All-American" had played.  

The football, helmet, and bulldog started out as blobs (very technical terms here) of rice crispie treats which I carved into the basic shapes, and then covered with a thin layer of white modeling chocolate to make them smooth.  I covered them with a second layer of colored modeling chocolate and then added all the details.....so each piece is 100% edible!  

The football and helmet were fairly straightforward, but the bulldog took hours to get right.  I keep tweaking a little bit here and there, adding some here, carving away some there, but finally he looked just the way I wanted: mean and fierce.  The teeth and spiked collar were the finishing touches!

The field is the actual cake part, frosted with green buttercream to look like grass.  The "grass tip" is one of my favorite cake decorating tools.  It is very versatile and adds a great texture.

On the sides of the cake were logos from several local and professional teams.

Happy Birthday to "Mr. All-American"!  I hope it was great!

I also delivered my last wedding cake of the year yesterday.  Creative Crumbs has grown so much in the last year, I can't wait to see what more 2013 will hold!  I'll be putting the finishing touches on my new kitchen space over the next few weeks and then the grand opening will be in January!