Adorn cakes and cupcakes with cute animals you’d find in a forest, all modelled from fondant (a.k.a. sugarpaste)! This tutorial shows you how to make two fondant woodland animals – perfect for beginners or if you need a refresher. Once you’ve mastered the modelling technique you can adapt to make any fondant creature you wish!
Ways you could use your fondant woodland creatures:
- Make them larger for a cluster on a cake tier, or larger still to feature on their own.
- Make these forest animals smaller for toppers on cupcakes. If you’d like to create bases for them to sit on, you could use a base covered in the moss effect sugarpaste or edible grass.
Top tip!
Think about different bases you could add for cupcakes, or to decorate a larger cake you could make autumn leaves for one of your modelled animals to sit on!
Fondant woodland animals tutorial
You will need
Edibles
- Light brown, dark brown, orange, black and white sugarpaste
- Edible glue
Equipment
- Paintbrush
Fondant hedgehog tutorial
1. Taking the lighter brown sugarpaste first, roll a ball and then roll on one side to create a cone shape. This will be the body. Repeat for two smaller pieces of paste for the ears and use the non-bristle end of the paintbrush to indent the paste in the middle of the two smaller cones.
2. Pinch the cones at the thinner end and stick the ears to the head of the body with edible glue.
3. Using the darker shade of brown, roll lots of thin tapered sausages. Starting from the front of the hedgehog behind the ears, stick the pieces to the body.
4. Work in lines, moving from the front to the back of the hedgehog until the rest of the cone is covered.
5. Using black sugarpaste, roll two tiny balls for eyes and a small fat sausage for the nose. Glue to the face of the hedgehog.
Fondant fox tutorial
1. Using orange sugarpaste, roll a cone as you did for the body of the hedgehog. Roll four orange tapered sausages for the legs, two slightly smaller for the front legs. Roll four small balls of black sugarpaste and flatten them. Stick them to the end of the orange sausages and roll the two parts together to blend the joins.
2. Stick the front legs to the body first, followed by the back legs, wrapping them round the side of the front legs.
3. For the head, roll a ball of orange sugarpaste. Apply a little pressure to one side of the ball and rock it backwards and forwards to create a pear shape.
4. Take a small piece of white sugarpaste and flatten it out so it's the same shape as the underside of the head.
5. Stick it to the bottom of the head and smooth the edges.
Top tip!
If you want to tone down the orange used for the fox, mix in some brown paste with the orange.
6. To make the tail, roll a long, tapered sausage of orange sugarpaste and a cone of white sugarpaste. Using the end of a paintbrush or a ball tool, make a hole in the fat end of the white cone.
7. Add glue inside the cone and stick the thinner end of the orange sausage inside it. Stick it to the body of the fox.
8. To make the ears, roll two cones of orange sugarpaste and flatten them slightly. Repeat for two slightly smaller cones of white sugarpaste and flatten these too. Stick the white onto the orange and cut a straight edge along the bottom.
9. Stick them to the head of the fox.
10. Roll a small fat sausage for the nose and two tiny thin sausages for the closed eyes. Stick them to the face.
Now you know how to model fondant woodland animals, how about modelling edible toadstools to complement your woodland scene? They’re such an enchanting addition!
