Fondant bows & ribbons...and animals

Today we again could work on a real cake. We started with making butter cream. I just love butter cream. Especially with a bit of alcohol in it =)
The combination of orange liqueur and apricot jam is just heavenly.

After filling the cake with butter cream, cooling it in the fridge it was time to cover it with some fondant. As we were free in the design of the cake I decided to take it easy. As you notice most of my cakes are white or blue or a combination of both so this time I wanted to use a different color. As this cake was a potential male birthday cake I decided to go with green.

In between all we had a mini master class on how to make bows and ribbons and animals from fondant. It turns out to be pretty easy. For the bows we used a mold and the ribbons were as easy as putting two end of a rectangle together. The animals were made with either a piece of round fondant or a drop shaped fondant. And the trick of making the eyes is actually to stand behind the animal and then draw the eyes with a piece of black edible
color.

I used a stencil and some edible green dust to make the decorations on my cake. I used a different stencil for the top and with a crimper I tied the top and sides together. 

Then I stared making the ribbons. To give it a bit more contrast I got some yellow/green fondant from one of the other students and put that as the inside of the ribbon. As the separate pieces of the ribbon has to dry I made a curtain to cover the seam. 

To make it stand out more I used a stencil to make a pattern. 

After the ribbons were dry I put them on a piece of round fondant (in the same color) and started to put the bow together. 

I didn't want to put to many animals on it so I made two mice with a piece of cheese and add them to the cake. They were actually there to cover up some of the not so pretty parts of the cake.

In the end the cake was devoured by my family members and I ended up making petit fours for the birthday boy!