How to make a Sausage Dog out of Cake

When I was asked to make a sausage dog out of cake, I was so excited. A little bit about me and Sausage dogs is that we have 5 of them in our family (2 are ours, 2 are my MILs and 1 my BILs). Nellie came first, followed by our Lola who was rescued by a North East Dachshund (why is it so hard to spell that word?!) Charity, DMT (https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1Byw2rKAwf/?mibextid=wwXIfr) and we essentially stopped her from becoming a hot dog. It went so well that my MIL interviewed for adoption soon after, but decided to save not 1 but 2 and a year later we just couldn’t stop ourselves from saving one more. At this point we could have our 5 aside team and I wouldn’t change it one bit.

So in terms of the cake, I felt creating a sausage dog was going to be easy. My initial plan was to have the dog cake lying on its back with its ears flopped out to the sides, a big smile on its face holding an engagement ring (the reason for the order was to celebrate an engagement) and while all cakes start out with a vision, unfortunately defying gravity is not yet in my cake making skill set so I had to opt for a different pose. However, adaptability is a skill I have acquired and one that is very much needed when creating custom cakes! Of course, as a hobby baker my client was in fact my best friend which meant the brief (or lack of it) gave me total creative freedom and she would tell me she loved it even if she didn’t (I’m sure of it).

So, we already had to change things up in terms of the pose. The next problem to solve was how to make the head. I’ve seen plenty of reels of bakers making structures out of rice crispy cake, making it look dead easy, but (if you’ve read my post on how to make a bath out of cake) you’ll know it didn’t come naturally to me. It’s sticky, it’s messy and it definitely isn’t as malleable as fondant, but with a bit of practice (and patience) you can create rough shapes, which we can cover in ganache and then shape properly with fondant.

After getting this far, I felt my cortisol levels start to fall as the body seemed to be the easier part to pull off. I had baked some sheet cakes, which I just needed to layer with buttercream and the carve into a body. Again, don’t worry too much about definition until it’s been ganached (ganached, a verb?!) and covered in fondant. Use a cake/fondant smoother to get all the kinks and cracks out of the fondant. However, you must remember to move quickly and go easy on the cornflour when rolling out your fondant to avoid drying it out. Once fondant becomes dry it’s harder to work with and just looks a bit… meh.

At this point, we’re almost there! I added ears, which were just two roughly shaped pieces of fondant (thick enough to hold their shape without breaking). When adding the ears, I had to think about gravity to make sure the pose didn’t look unnatural. Finally, I added a tail, a love heart and a little writing and alas we have a sausage dog made out of cake! Oh and edible glitter, I ALWAYS add a bit of glitter to finish off a cake.