Original birthday cakes are a tradition at 1840 Farm. I sometimes spend weeks preparing a cake’s blueprint and gathering the tools, both edible and not, to assemble the masterpiece in time for the big celebration.
I’ve made three-dimensional poodles, polar bears, dinosaurs, and even a Flying Ford Anglia inspired by the Harry Potter series. So, when I asked my soon-to-be birthday girl what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday, I was expecting a challenge. I wasn’t expecting for her to request a three-dimensional cake in the likeness of her hen, Amelia.
Amelia, who is my daughter’s favorite member of our little flock, was in fact named for Amelia Earhart. My daughter got the idea when our Amelia was the first of the chicks to fly. She loved to fly around their pen and beat the rest of them to it by several weeks. It seemed like the perfect name for her. Now I had to make the perfect birthday cake using her as my model.
Once I asked my daughter two or six or 12 more times if she was sure that she wanted a Golden Laced Wyandotte cake for her birthday, I was told “Yes” emphatically each time. Okay, the game was on. Now, how exactly would I make an Amelia birthday cake?
I gathered all that I had learned from my years of Wilton Cake Decorating classes and took a deep breath. This one wouldn’t be easy. This time, my model was not a beloved stuffed animal, fictional car, or cartoon character. She was a living, breathing, clucking resident of 1840 Farm. In fact, she lives 50 yards from our farmhouse door.
Planning the construction of the cake wasn’t the only challenge. Explaining to family and friends what kind of birthday celebration my daughter was having was quite an experience all on its own. When a child has a birthday approaching, friends and family tend to inquire about the upcoming celebration. Each time they asked, my daughter proudly responded that she was having a “chicken birthday” complete with a “chicken cake.” In each instance, the inquiring party developed a puzzled look on their face and looked to me for an explanation.
I could discern from their expressions that they were imagining a cake made of chicken. If they know our family very well, they are fully aware that we raise chickens but don’t eat them. I could understand the confusion. So, I delicately explained that this cake would be in the shape of a chicken but constructed of traditional cake components. Even as the information sunk in, they appeared to be slightly concerned. Those without chickens found it a bit odd that a 10-year-old girl would chose a birthday cake in the shape of a chicken. Like I said, they don’t have chickens.
I searched the Internet for photos of chicken cakes for inspiration. All of the examples I found were cakes with a chicken decoration added to the top. Given that I had made the Flying Ford Anglia only three months before for her brother’s birthday, I didn’t think that a chicken shape made out of frosting would do. I was going to have to pull out all of the stops and figure this one out on my own.
To make the shape of a chicken, I had a few options. I could use a three-dimensional pan and decorate it as a chicken. I could construct a layer cake and carve the shape of a chicken from the layers. I’ve carved three-dimensional cakes before, but I was afraid that the weight of the chicken’s head would cause the neck to break and the cake to topple over. This wasn’t exactly the fond birthday memory I was hoping to create.
I also considered shaping the head out of marshmallow cereal treats, but I was again afraid that I wouldn’t be able to shape the head and neck in a stable manner. I wasn’t sure which process to choose. In the end, I decided to use a cake pan that I had used several other times and had good results with.Enter the Wilton 3-D Duck cake pan. Yes, I know that it is a duck and not a chicken, but Wilton doesn’t make a chicken-shaped pan. A duck would have to do. I had used this pan before and knew that I could indeed make it into a passable chicken.
While the oven was preheating, I prepared the pan and set it aside to mix a double batch of my favorite chocolate cake recipe. The cake pan holds about one and a half batches of traditional cake batter.
After the bottom half of the pan has been filled, the top half attaches and then a few pieces of kitchen twine are used to keep the halves together as the cake rises. I poured the remaining cake batter into an 8-inch round pan to be used as the cake’s base. Then it was off to the oven for the recipe’s recommended baking time.
When the baking time has elapsed, the cake can be tested for doneness through the hole in the top half of the pan. When a toothpick inserted into the cake from the hole had only crumbs attached to it, I removed the pan from the oven and set it aside for ten minutes to cool. After ten minutes had passed, I removed the twine along with the top of the pan to allow the cake to cool for another twenty minutes. At the end of this cooling period, I placed the top of the pan over the cake and used it to flip the cake to the other side. Then I removed the bottom of the pan and allowed the cake to completely cool for one hour.After the duck-shaped cake had cooled, I wrapped it with food wrap and then placed it inside a freezer bag. I washed and dried the bottom half of the pan and placed the double wrapped cake in the pan to stabilize it and then moved it to the freezer for two days. The night before I planned to decorate the cakes, I removed them from the freezer and allowed both to sit on the counter in their wrapping to thaw overnight.
The next morning, I removed the wrapping from the cakes and prepared to decorate them. First, I placed the round base on a cake platter using a dollop of frosting to adhere it. After frosting the base layer, I leveled the bottom of the duck and centered it on the base. I stabilized the duck by driving a dowel into the top of the head down through the cake and base layer until I could feel that it was touching the cake platter. I frosted the duck with a light crumb coat and then placed the cake platter in the refrigerator to chill and set the frosting.
After about thirty minutes, I rolled up my sleeves and began to transform the duck into a chicken. I was prepared with photos of a Golden Laced Wyandotte from a reference book as well as several photos of Amelia.
I tried several different-sized tips for making the feathers on this cake. Some were too small while others were too large. Then I tried a medium leaf tip and realized that I had hit the jackpot. Now I had to decide on the frosting colors and how to mix them to create a cake that would leave my birthday girl saying, “Wow!” That proved to be easier said than done.
Technically, I should have used black and gold frosting to replicate Amelia’s plumage, but I was hesitant. Black frosting can be incredibly difficult to work with, not to mention what happens to your guests when they actually eat the cake. It takes an inordinate amount of food coloring to yield a truly black frosting. The colossal amount of food coloring ends up painting your guest’s teeth a lovely shade of dark mossy green as it is being eaten.
A little black frosting is okay. In fact, children are sometimes quite amused at their teeth turning mossy green while eating their birthday cake. It really is quite a parlor trick. In this case, I would have a cake covered mostly in black frosting. I didn’t want to be sitting at the table after everyone had helped themselves to a hearty helping of a cake and looked more like ghouls than birthday party guests.
It was time to make a deal with the birthday girl. What if the dark portions of the cake were a dark chocolate brown instead? Dark chocolate frosting would taste delicious and allow all of our teeth to remain their natural color. Luckily, my daughter didn’t care what color the frosting feathers were. She just hoped that it would resemble her beloved Amelia. Now I could get down to making the feathers on the cake that resembled a duck more than a chicken.
I prepared two types of frosting for making the feathers. The first was a dark mocha brown and the other was a light coppery tan color. Then I took a little time to play with the colors and attempt to make a feather shape with the decorating tip. I tried striping the two colors in one bag of frosting and making a few feathers on a piece of parchment paper. Instead of the colors yielding a realistic feather pattern, they mixed together and looked marbled. I tried several other times to combine the two colors to make the feathers but never succeeded in finding a technique that could yield the end result that I was looking for.
Then I pushed back from the kitchen table and realized that I was agonizing over how to mix two colors of brown frosting to decorate a duck-shaped cake as if it was a real black-and-gold-colored chicken. It was time to gather what sanity I had left, take a deep breath, and go back to the decorating table. Combining solid dark brown feathers with interspersed light copper feathers ended up being the answer. No, it didn’t look exactly like Amelia, but it looked like it would elicit just the response I was hoping for from my daughter.
I continued on until the cake was covered with feathers. Then I mixed a small amount of orange for the beak per my daughter’s request. Using a large white chocolate disk and light blue frosting, I prepared two eyes to be attached to the head. I tried in vain to replicate Amelia’s rose comb and wattles, but each time it seemed to make the cake look more like a duck than it did without them. In the end, I decided that as far as a child’s birthday cake is concerned, aesthetics were more important than physiology. After affixing a piece of 1.5-inch-wide ribbon to the outside edge of the bottom base layer, it was time for the cake to sit patiently in the refrigerator until party time arrived.
When it was finally time to affix the candles and sing “Happy Birthday” to our birthday girl, I was happy with the results. So was she. Her smile told me that all of my hard work was worth it. She didn’t care that it slightly resembled a duck or that Amelia’s beautiful rose comb had been left out. She was only concerned with the excitement of her big day and the knowledge that I loved her enough to try and make exactly what she wanted. That was reward enough for me.
I hope that my daughter will always have a fond memory of her tenth birthday and our chicken-themed festivities. Maybe someday as an adult she will recount to a friend about celebrating her tenth birthday with a chicken cake. Luckily, she’ll get to explain that it was a chicken-shaped cake instead of a cake made out of chicken.
Now you know all about my journey to create an original cake in the likeness of Amelia, one of our Golden Laced Wyandottes. If you are interested in learning about all of the chicken-themed handmade gifts that I crafted to be given to the birthday girl, stay tuned. I’ll be writing about them in my next post.
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8 Comments
I’m not a mom, but just wanted to give you some huge kudos to being an outstanding parent! I’m lucky if my mom remembers my bithday. Not looking for sympathy just touting your amazing efforts; your daughter is one lucky girl!
I was going to suggest cutting the shapes out of fruit leather for the comb and wattles, but Lois’s idea is probably better.
Paula,
I love the molding idea using PlayDough! You have sent my mind racing trying to come up with the next thing I’ll want to try and make. I can sense that I will be picking up a new container and finding something to mold out of chocolate for the next cake that I make!
Another method of making strange-shaped objects is to use Wilton candy melts and playdough! Buy colored candy melts or tint some with Wilton candy colors until it is the right color. Melt SLOWLY in a double boiler or on low in the microwave. Either pipe it onto wax paper, or make an impression in clean new playdough and fill it with the warm candy. Refrigerate until candy is cool and hard. Pop off the 3D candy pieces and add to cake. I have used this method to make edible car keys, a Starbucks cup lid, boulders for a castle cake, and many oddball cake decorations!
Lois,
Thank you for the lovely compliment and great ideas for our next chicken cake! I can’t wait to try your tip for the comb. I see a second chicken cake in my near future! I hope that you will try the leaf tip the next time you find yourself making a chicken cake and let me know what you think. I was surprised at how well they turned out.
The horse cake sounds fantastic. My daughter loves horses almost as much as she loves her chickens, so I’m sure your idea will come in handy. So far, I have turned duck cakes into a poodle, polar bear, and chicken. Who knows what I might come up with next!
You did a great job!
Let me give you a hint for your next chicken cake. Trust me, you will be asked to make another one. I started my caking hobby with a chicken cake.(you can also spring for a small heavy 3D chicken mold often found on ebay)
Use red fondant or very stiff frosting to make the comb, opening up the bottom of the comb like an envelope so that it sits down upon the head.
Adding black food coloring to the chocolate is how to achieve black without having to mess up people’s teeth with the color.
I love your idea for the feathers. I have only ever used the star tip, but yours look more realistic. I definitely will use my leaf tip next time.
You can also use the rubber ducky pan to make a horse. Cut down the beak and add a stiff frosting muzzle. Cut down the tail feather hump and draw down ribbons of frosting for the tail. Make fondant ears, use Jr. Mint candy for the eyes. (in February, you can find the heart shaped Jr. Mints at JoAnne Fabric stores.)
I think you will continue to amaze your daughter year after year because after your first chicken cake, the possibilities are endless!
Thanks for the kind compliment. I’m glad that your daughter is still keeping her fond memories close at heart. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that my daughter will do the same.
Great story—terrific cake! Many years ago when my youngest daughter was turning 8 (I think) she had a “raccoon birthday”. She still still remembers it…so I’m betting your daughter will remember her special chicken day!