Cow Puzzle

For my third (and final) Threadcakes entry, I decided to make a cake in the shape of a cow! I loved the Cow Puzzle design the first time I saw it – it appealed to my sense of humour and also my interest in food and nose to tail cooking. As I’d never carved a shape out of a cake before, I also thought that it would be a nice, simple design to practice cake carving.

I baked a sheet cake which I flavoured with lemon (using both lemon juice and lemon zest) and then coloured red to make it look more meat-like. I prepared a stencil using a meat-cut chart – due to the angle of the cow on the original t-shirt design, I didn’t think it would make a great stencil so made my own. I pinned the stencil onto the cake with toothpicks and carefully cut around it. I also dug out the holes in the middle.

Once it was cow-shaped, I crumb-coated the cake in buttercream and left it in the fridge overnight. The next day, I iced it with buttercream I’d added lemon juice to, and covered it with coloured fondant. I let the fondant cover over the holes in the cake, and then cut them out and pushed the fondant down into the icing. I used an edible marker to sketch out the main features of the outline, and then piped brown buttercream icing to form the outline of the cake, and additional features like the ear, tail and puzzle outlines around the holes. I added more buttercream around the edge of the cake, and tried to smooth it as much as I could.

Once that was all dry, I mixed up a little bit of thin icing which I tinted grey, and then used a paintbrush to colour the insides of the holes. In retrospect I should have done my decorating in a different order, starting with the grey and building the outlines up after that – but of course I didn’t think of that until I was trying not to get grey icing on the rest of the cake! Then it was a matter of making the ‘meat’ puzzle pieces. I used a bit of leftover fondant to shape the pieces (and of course I tested them to make sure they all fit in the puzzle properly!) and painted red gel colouring on them. I used more fondant to add the details on the puzzle pieces.

I took this cake to work and we had a tea party (cow party?!). Using a handy ‘Apprenticeship in Butchering’ book, we determined the best way to carve up the cake, and pieces were duly distributed. One person said they wouldn’t eat it once they saw it was cow-shaped (!) but everyone else agreed it was delicious and moist, with the lemon flavour being refreshing without being overpowering.

I’m so glad I found this competition – I’ve had a heap of fun preparing my entries and I’ve learned a lot about cake decorating in the process. I’m sure I’ll be back next year!