Introducing the puppy cake!

When I made the horse cake two weeks ago, my 12 year old neighbor asked for a cake of her dog for her party this past weekend.

Making the horse had been good practice and I felt pretty confident about making the dog, a Shepard with one blue eye, one brown. In fact, I was pretty excited to try the shape again as I had learned a lot when making the horse.

The beginning went great. I baked the cake in loaf pans, stacked them together and used chocolate frosting as a middle layer and as a glue to keep the pieces together. Then I shaped the cake, carefully cutting with a bread knife to get the desired shape, pictured below.
Using a star tip and vanilla and chocolate buttercream, I began decorating. Then the humidity set in, making the buttercream too soft. October is usually a great month where I live, with cool temps and rain. But the tradewinds decided to stop this week and we were left with high levels of humidity and heat. I began my routine of putting the cake in the fridge for 10 minutes at a time. This worked for a while until I opened the fridge and saw that the entire muzzle of the dog had fallen off and was now lying on the bottom of the fridge - with a white frosting trail on every shelf.

I originally had the nose resting on the feet with a gap below - a major flaw in the plan. The frosting made the cake too heavy and it collapsed and fell forward.

Looking back, it was pretty funny and I should have paused to take a picture of the fridge and the nose at the bottom with the body at the top, but I was so concerned about the time that I immediately focused on fixing the problem.

Fortunately I had cake left over from the shaping so I cut off a large square piece and placed it on the cake board in place of the nose. It made his head look bigger, but also made him look like he was resting his head between his paws and not on them.

I quickly decorated it with the buttercream and the nose turned out great! I know now to be wary of design flaws for the next time.
The eyes and nose were made out of fondant and decorated with my food coloring pens.
My neighbor was thrilled and the cake was a big hit at the party. I think I'm getting the hang of these shaped cakes! I have blog requests for a tortoise and a camel. Stay tuned. :)