Making a Duckie Cake

My oldest daughter, Grace turned 18 over the weekend.  I decided for her 18th birthday I should make her a special 3-D rubber duckie cake.  Now these are usually made for baby showers or 1st birthdays, but Grace collects rubber ducks so I knew it was perfect for her.  I bought the 3-D rubber duck pan that Wilton sells, waited until she was out of the house, and set to work.

The directions that come with the pan say to grease it with shortening and then flour it.  I was meticulous about doing this, because I figured it was important to do a good job and not let any metal show through.  I probably spent at least 10 minutes greasing and flouring the pans, and checking to make sure they were thoroughly covered.

Then I made chocolate cake batter from a cake mix and filled the bottom pan to the top with batter.  When I first was planning this I assumed the cake pan had you bake two halves and frost them together.  But actually with this pan you connect a top and bottom pan together and bake it all at once.  So the next step was putting the top pan on, and wiring it shut with florists wire.  If it is not wired shut the rising cake will push the top pan off.

After that I baked it, and waited to see if it came out of the pan as it cooled.  It turns out the time I spent greasing the pan was well spent, since I had no trouble getting the cake out.  The cake turned out a little lopsided and the top of the cake was cracked, but I figured I could cover up the imperfections with frosting. 

After we let the cake cool for hours I made buttercream frosting and started making stars all over the cake.  We covered it in yellow frosting, made the beak orange and used nonpariels for the eyes.  Here is how it looked when we finished.

The next day my kids and I decided we had to make it even cuter, so we used an ice cream cone to make a party hat, borrowed some ducks from Grace’s collection to put around it, and made “water” for it to swim in on the cake plate.  Our final creation was a big surprise for the birthday girl, since we did most of the work while she was working.  She loved the cake, and the only problem was she didn’t want to cut it and eat it.