Flamingo Cake for my birthday 2025

 

Flamingo cake

My birthday is only 6 days after Bubbie's.  We're almost twins! 

This year we had lots of leftover pistachio cake.  Not only was there cake left over from his party, but I had several cake layers in the freezer, left over from when I tried Preppy Kitchen's pistachio cake recipe.  I also had leftover gluten-free cake mix from the cupcakes I made for his Bubbie's party.  I even had leftover freeze-dried raspberries. There was no need to shop or to bake anything and I was free to focus on the most fun part: decorating!

I'd been wanting to make a Flamingo Cake for a few years now and decided to try it for the occasion. I made the head of the flamingo several days in advance. It was made out of colored and shaped fondant with CMC powder added for firming. It still took several days to dry.

The day before decorating, I colored some fondant green and made the monstera leaves using this mold that I had at hand. A small amount of fondant goes a long way with these molds, and I was able to make lots of leaves of different sizes.  I didn't want these to dry out too much, so they would still be pliable and easier to place on the cake. So I put them on a cookie sheet and covered them with plastic wrap overnight.

Also the day before decorating, I made the flamingo feathers. These were made from pink candy melts I had at hand.  I use this "melting pot" from Wilton to keep the candy melts melted, but I'm not as impressed with it and most reviewers are on Amazon.  I find it difficult to properly melt these candy coatings and I find that sometimes it depends on the color.  These pink ones I had were old, too, so maybe that had something to do with how hard they were to work with.  I ended up having to melt the in the microwave, pour them into the melting pot to stay warm, and work fast.  Even in the pot they were not staying warm enough to work with easily, so I had to make several trips back and forth between the melting pot and the microwave.  Of course being candy melts they make a mess all over the place, too.  To make the actual feathers I dropped mounds of candy onto a sheet of parchment and then spread it down vertically using the small offset spatula.  I made two sheets' worth of feathers, to use up all the candy I'd melted and to have a selection of sizes and thicknesses.  Most of the feathers were pretty thin, though.

For the actual cake, I thawed out pistachio cake layers and cut them down from 9-inch rounds to a 6-inch round.  I was surprised to see that the layers I'd considered to be too thin, were actually pretty much a normal thickness once you cut off the outer few inches.  By then I'd baked the remaining gluten free cake mix - about half the box - in two 6-inch pans. So my layers added up to more than enough height and I ended up refreezing one of the pistachio layers.

I made more raspberry buttercream from Sugar and Sparrow's recipe to ice the cake.  I even had raspberry filling left over from Bubbie's cake that I was able to use up between one of the layers.  I filled the other layer and iced the top of the cake with chocolate buttercream that had been in the freezer since I made the basketball cake for Bubbie's team back in March.  Thanks to these fillings and to the cake only being a 6" round, I had just the right amount of raspberry buttercream to crumb coat the sides of the cake, then cover the whole cake with a second coat of frosting. 

Putting the cake together was easy and so much fun.   I anticipated that the hardest part of the whole decor would be to pipe the flamingo legs, since it requires piping straight lines onto the side of a cake.  I marked lines for where the legs would be and did this step first, tilting the cake a bit as best I could.  Even so I had to scrape them off once or twice and start over until I was more of less satisfied.  For this part I used some chocolate frosting I'd saved from icing the cake, in a piping bag with a round tip.  I tried a few tips until I found a size I liked. 

The flamingo head was attached with toothpicks.  I'd put some toothpicks along the bottom of the head when I made it, but it needed additional toothpicks to support it from behind.  If this cake had to travel or if it was for someone else, that would be an area that needs improvement. But for myself it was just fine, I don't care if toothpicks are visible from the back.  Placing the feathers was the absolute best. I used a variety of sizes, doing it by eye, and there's really no right way to do it.  Or, in other words, there's  no way you can do it wrong!  Here again, though, if the cake had to travel I'd have to make much sturdier feathers, because a breeze could have knocked these off. 

The monstera flowers on the side of the cake were a nice final touch. Since the cake was small, I only had room for 4 of the smaller flowers.  If the cake were for someone else, though, I might have placed the rest along the entire cake. But for myself I liked the simpler look, plus I don't like us to eat fondant.

With this cake I used up the last of my fondant, in fact. I was glad to do so because it was old... I'd bought it to have at hand when shopping was hard due to the pandemic. That's how old!  Next cake will have fresh fondant.  

I enjoyed my birthday with a simple meal of cod cakes and this "recycled" cake. Everything in it was about reduce, reuse, recycle!