Grey Wolf

My first Wolf cake was a lot of fun to make, and brought its own set of challenges.  Until I started to work on this cake, I didn’t realize how different the shape of a wolf is than a dog or other animal.  The snout of the wolf is smaller and skinnier, and the fur of the wolf makes the head look a lot larger.  I also had to work with a limited amount of cake, while still making the wolf look fierce.

  The customer requested a fearsome looking wolf.  Originally I was thinking of having a wide open mouth with teeth ready to bite, but after some consideration, I thought that having the snarling look with teeth bared was much more wolf-like.  I also noticed that wolves seem to have teeth primarily visible at the front of their mouths – another thing unlike some other animals.  I tried to really match up the teeth with pictures I found of wolves.

 One big challenge I faced with this cake was trying to make the surface of the cake look like fur.  I didn’t want to use buttercream, because the texture created would look thick and matted, and wolf fur looks softer and brush-like.  I was intending to try using a large brush to apply some speckled texture to the cake surface, when all of the sudden I remembered an effect I had once gotten out of my airbrush.  By turning the air pressure nearly all the way down, the color came out of the airbrush in the exact speckled texture I was looking for.  The bottom layer of fondant over most of the fur (except where the fur was intended to be white) was a deep pink color.  Over that I layered ivory, and then black to create the varying colors found in the  wolf’s fur.

I was thrilled with how this cake came out – I think this ended up being one of my most successful cakes!