Clown Cake from American Cake Decorating Magazine

American Cake Decorating Magazine

Clown Cake

You will need:

• 2 8-inch round cake layers
• Buttercream icing
• Decorating comb
• Airbrush or spray coloring
• Icing color: yellow, blue,purple, flesh, pink, black, red, orange and blue
• Patterns from page 57
• Parchmant or pastry bags
• Tips: #2, #4, #8, #10, #22, #32 and #199
• Small spatula or paletteknife
• 1 1/2-inch Styrofoam ball
• Fondant
• Piping gel
• Dowel or skewer
• Scissors
• Tagboard
• Small drop flowers (made ahead)

1 - Fill and ice the cake with buttercream icing, texturing the side of the cake with a decorating comb. Using an airbrush or spray coloring, cover the side with rings of color. Start with a yellow ring around the center of the cake, then add a blue ring around the bottom and a purple one at the top. Trace the clown’s face using the pattern provided and pipe an outline with flesh-colored icing and tip #10.

2 - Fill in the outline with flesh tone icing and smooth it with a small spatula or palette knife.

3 - Spray a rosy circle of pink over each cheek. Position the eye patterns and trace their shapeonto the face. With white icing and tip #8, pipe a sausage-shaped arc from cheek to cheek forming a mouth. Use the same bag and tip to outline and fill in the eyes. Smooth the icing as before.

4 - Switching to black icing and tip #4, pipe pupils into the eyes, outlining, filling and smoothing over them. Then, outline the eyes, add a line through the smile, and pipe a crescent-shape on each cheek. With white icing and tip #2, add a small white highlight in the same position in each pupil. This twinkle adds life to the clown’s countenance.

5 - Cover the Styrofoam ball with red fondant and smooth. (Hint: covering the ball with a very thin layer of piping gel will help the fondant stick to the ball). Attach the ball to the end of a dowel or skewer. Holding the dowel with a scissors, insert it into the cake as its nose.

6 - Pipe a purple reverse-shell Border at the base of the cake with tip #22. At the top, pipe a simple shell border in white with tip #199.

7 - Using tip #32 and orange icing, pull elongated stars out away from the face for hair. Eyebrows are piped in the same way, keeping them a bit shorter in length.

8 - Trace the bowtie pattern twice on a piece of tagboard and cut out the pieces. Pipe dark blue icing onto one side of each piece, smooth the icing with a palette knife, and position as shown. Pipe a "knot" between the bows with tip #8 or #10.

9 - Add a pattern to the bow tie with small drop flowers in any color. A few red dots fill the empty spaces and provide a finished look.