My igloo cake

Not too long ago my friend, Stacie asked me to make a cake for her of an igloo with little black and white penguins on it. The on.e she really loved was the igloo cake from Martha Stewart.com. I thought it would be a "good thing" to see if I could in fact make a copy of that cake.

The original cake is an ice cream cake and that is not what Stacie wanted. Instead I used a regular yellow cake and used a butter cream frosting, the one I usually use to make decorated cakes. I baked two round layers and a domed layer in a metal bowl that fit perfectly on top of the 9-inch layers. I didn't know I had the bowl and I wasn't sure what I should use to make the rounded top--until I was drying dishes one day and picked up the bowl and thought how perfect it would be for the top of the igloo cake. I lined it with parchment paper and poured in the batter. I had to bake it a little longer than the layers but I think it turned out perfectly. I will use that pan anytime I have a domed top for a cake.

 I did use marshmallows to make the doorway and covered it with frosting. I then made some little penguins from black and white fondant and put coconut around the cake for the "snow." Making figures from fondant is kind of like playing with clay.

I did use a smaller tip for piping icing onto my cake. I didn't realize there was a very large set of piping tips until I went to Michael's to buy a tip and found a really large one. I decided to use the smaller one. (Actually it was one of the large tips--number 125.) I also could have smoothed on the icing and used a knife or another implement to score the cake for the "ice blocks." With this cake, I just piped it on.

Now you can make a decision and let me know. I know my cake isn't better at all, but it looks like a pretty close second to me.

You can go here to see how the original cake was made.