A simple but adorable penguin Peso Cake tutorial that your Octonauts fanatic will love.
Peso Cake
Our Baby Boy turned 4 this past Fall. ย Man, time is just flying by! ย Baby Boy has a big obsession with the ocean. ย It all started with Nemo, and his most recent addiction is Octonauts. ย So we had an Octonauts birthday party for him this year.
His favorite Octonauts character is Peso since he's the paramedic and Daddy's one too. ย Baby Boy wants to grow up and help people just like Peso. And Daddy. ย So I wanted to make him a special Peso cake for his birthday, that was enough to suit even my novice cake decorating skills.
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Supplies to Make Your Own Pesoย Cake
- Layer cake, baked, filled, and well chilled
- Double batch buttercream frosting
- 1-2 tablespoons cocoa powder
- Black Food Coloring
- Orange Food Coloring
- Light Blue Food Coloring
- Cake Decorating Tips (I just have 2 sets of tips that cover pretty much all purposes- This set has basically every little tip you can think. And I also use this larger tip set, specifically for the 1M tip for cupcakes)
- In this tutorial, I specifically used tips: 2A, round tip 4, open star tip 16, open star tip 21, and 104 petal tip.
- 4 decorating bags (These are my favorite)
- 2ย couplers
Directions for Peso Cake
1. ย Start by dirty icing or crumb coating your cake, which is basically just adding a thin layer of frosting over the cake to fill in any cracks, gaps, or holes and to keep any cake crumbs from making their way into your final, smooth design. I just use a straight spatula like this one to make it smooth. ย If you want to see it being done, you can check out this video. ย It's really very simple. ย When you're done crumb coating your cake, pop it back in the refrigerator to chill again for about an hour.
2. ย While your cake is chilling, we'll prep the frosting. ย Separate 1 cup of buttercream, add the orange food coloring and mix well. Set aside. ย Separate ยฝ cup of frosting, add the light blue food coloring, and mix well. ย Set aside. ย Separate 1 cup of frosting, and leave it white. Set aside. ย For the remaining frosting,ย add 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder and the black food coloring and mix well. ย If your frosting is looking a little purple instead of black, add an additional tablespoon of cocoa powder.
3. ย Put a coupler on each of 2 separate bags, a large round tip (like the Wilton 2A tip) on the third bag, and the 104 petal tip on the last bag. ย Place the white frosting and orangeย frosting in the bags with couplers. ย Fill the bag with the petal tip with the blue frosting. ย And fill the bag with the round tip 2A with as much black frosting as you think you can handle at once; this bag is the one you will use to actually frost the cake.
4. ย When your cake has chilled, remove it from the refrigerator, and begin frosting it using the bag with the round tip. ย To frost, just pipe the frosting all the way around the cake, kind of in a spiral, so that the whole thing is covered. ย Then go back and smooth it out with your straight spatula. ย It's much easier to get a smooth cake with buttercream using this piping technique.
5. ย Put a size 4 round tip on the bag of white frosting with the coupler. ย Draw a large rounded heart shape with the white frosting in the center of the cake for the face. ย Draw 2 small circles for the eyes, and an upside down triangle for the beak. ย Then for the hat, draw a skinny rectangle to the top right of the heart shape. ย Then draw a semi-circle on top of the skinny rectangle. ย ย I like to sketch on paper so that I can get the feel before doing the frosting. ย And the great thing is, it's easy to "erase" mistakes because the frosting will just wipe right off.
6. ย Put a medium-sized star tip on the white frosting (I used a Wilton Open Star Tip 16). ย Fill in the face and the hatย by piping in small stars until the area is completely covered with white. Be sure eyes and beak alone for now.
7. ย When the entire area is filled in, pipe in 2 small white stars on the eyes.
8. ย Take the star tip off the white frosting, rinse completely, then attach it to the bag of orangeย frosting with the coupler. ย Using the same technique, fill in the beakย by piping small stars with the orange frosting.
9. ย To finish Peso's hat, make a ribbon by piping the blue frosting across the rectangle part of the hat. ย Then make a circle on the top part of the hat.
Your Peso cake is now ready for the party!
Did you like this Peso Cake tutorial?ย Find more on my Cakes & Cupcakes, Party Cakes, and Party Ideas boards on Pinterest!
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Sam says
This is so adorable! I definitely could have used this a few years ago when my son was obsessed with Octonauts!
Morgan @ Morgan Manages Mommyhood says
This is absolutely adorable! I love how easy it seems! My dude love Octonauts as well!