Reindeer Cake

Celebrate the festive season with this cheeky reindeer! 

Dani Brazier from Blue Door Bakery has created this beautiful reindeer cake perfect for Christmas celebrations.  Ensure you take the nose off before eating unless you use red edible glitter.

Reindeer Cake

You will need

For the cake:

• 15cm (6in) round cake

To decorate:

• approx. 600g (1lb 4oz) buttercream
• brown, black and red modelling paste
• gold lustre dust
• rejuvenator spirit

Equipment:

• 20cm (8in) cake drum
• side scraper
• palette knife
• cake leveller
• food skewers
• paintbrush
• 4cm (1.5in) circle cutter
• red edible glitter
• edible glue
• piping bag fitted with a grass nozzle

Method:

1. Begin by using a cake leveller and splitting the cakes in half. I had 4 layers of cake for this style of cake so it was nice and tall.
2. Next, on a 20cm (8in) drum, layer up with chocolate buttercream and spread evenly with your palette knife. Continue building up the layers of cake and buttercream.
3. Add a rough coat of buttercream all over the cake, then scrape off the excess using your side scraper.
4. Keep adding buttercream and scraping it off until the cake is very smooth and straight. You can spread a small amount of buttercream on the cake drum too to cover this up.
5. Roll a long sausage of brown paste, slice small sections off each side and trim to length for the antlers. Make 2 of these.
6. Once trimmed, insert food skewers into the base of each antler which will hold them straight and give them support.
7. Roll brown paste to the thickness of a £1 coin. Cut out 2 x 4cm (1.5in) circles. Lightly indent a smaller circle inside. Gently pinch the opposite sides of this to form the ears.
8. Mix a small amount of gold lustre dust with rejuvenator spirit or vodka to form a paint. Paint the inside of the ears with this gold paint and leave to dry.
9. You can also dust your antlers with the lustre dust to make them a little shimmery, then pop them in the fridge to firm up for at least an hour.
10. Cut out a red circle of modelling paste. This was 9cm (3½in) in size. Cover it in glue, then sprinkle over the glitter, making sure it is completely covered and the glitter is even. Gently pick up and tip off the excess glitter and leave to dry for no more than 10 minutes.
11. Insert the antlers first, just either side of the centre of the cake, then add the ears just in front of the antlers. As the buttercream is now set hard from the fridge, you can add glue if needed.
12. Using black modelling paste, roll long thin sausage shapes. Cut to around 5-7cm (2-3in) in length.
13. Add some glue to your cake, then stick on the nose. Now stick on the thin sausage shapes in a curve to make the eyes.
14. Cut out some more smaller sausages and stick 3 on each side to make eyelashes. I find it easier to use the end of a paintbrush to help position these in place.
15. Place a grass nozzle inside a piping bag, then fill with a few tablespoons of buttercream. Gently squeeze until the buttercream is just coming out the nozzle. Continue squeezing on the cake, then stop squeezing and pull upwards to form the hair strands. Keep going and fill in between the antlers and over the front of the cake.