Chocolate Kitty Birthday Cake (Vegan, Dairy and Egg Free)

This year is my boyfriends first birthday as a Vegan. I've recently gotten a bit more into decorative baking and interested in sugar paste craft. So this was a great occassion for me to have my first crack at a properly decorated cake.

We have 2 cats, Keeko who is a 4 year old maine coon and Cady, an 8 month old kitten. Both of us are obsessed and adore them, so making a cat themed cake for Mikes birthday seemed perfect.

The sugar paste cats were quite simple to make. I used Black, white and pink Renshaws Sugarpaste. Would recommend buying somewhere like Hobbycraft or Asda instead of ordering online as it's actually cheaper in a shop.

Edible glue is very handy to have. Because of the weight of the cats and the larger paws, I didn't feel water would be secure in sticking them on.

We'll start with the basic cake recipe. Chocolate fudge is what he asked for and I was quite glad as it make's for a sturdy base for the heavy icing. 

I doubled up the recipe and made 2 cakes, the recipe below is for a standard 7" but I opted for a 9" and made twice the amount.

Ingredients 

• 280g plain flour 
• 400g sugar 
• 100g cocoa 
• 170ml water 
• 170ml vegetable oil 
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder

You will also need:

• 170ml water
• 3 eggs worth of egg replacer
• teaspoon of vanilla essence

Mix these last 3 ingredients together in a separate bowl and keep aside until later.

In a large bowl, add your flour, sugar, cocoa, bicarb, salt and baking powder. Then add the water and oil and mix until it forms a sticky, shiny paste.

When it's mixed, add your water/egg/vanilla mix into the bowl and whisk with a hand mixer until it's blended together, runny and pour-able.

Grease your Cake tin/s with marg and flour, then pour in your cake mixture.

Bake in the oven at 190o or gas 5 for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick come out clean.

Leave to cool in tins, then transfer to a cooling rack until cold.

When cooled, I spread chocolate icing on both tops and sandwiched the cakes together.

For the Icing I used

• 1kg of black Renshaws regalice sugarpaste
• 500g of white Renshaws regalic sugarpaste
• Edible glue

A tip for storing open sugar paste is to keep it wrapped in a freezer bag and put in an airtight container, and to put anything you make into airtight containers if you won't be sticking it to your cake for a day or more.

When icing it's easier to put your cake straight onto the board or plate you'll be serving it from to save moving and possible damage.

For the Cats - I rolled a ping pong ball sized piece of icing into a pear shape, then stuck a tooth in the middle.

Then roll a smaller piece of icing for the head and stick that on the the toothpick body.

For features, its just rolling and shaping and flattening different coloured icing to match the look of the cats. And the tail is just a sausage shape rolled out to the right size.

The eyes are 2 white balls with 2 smaller black balls stuck on, and the ears are triangular shaped icing, a small pink ball with do for the nose and etching 4 lines onto the bottom of the body will make paws.

Make sure to glue the eyes, mouth, ears and markings on.

For the black cover - First off, cover your worktop with greaseproof paper, then roll your icing into a ball. Using a rolling pin, roll your ball flat, a few rolls in each direction at a time to maintain the circular shape.

To cover the 9" cake I rolled the icing out til it was 13" in all directions.

Using a spatula, gently unstick the bottom of the icing sugar from the greaseproof paper and transfer it to your cake. Try to get it centered on the first go as moving it around can poke holes in the icing.

When the icing is positioned where you want it, gently fold the sides down with your fingers til it covers all the way to the base. Smooth until you are happy with the finish.

For the white paws, I pulled small amounts of icing out the packet and rolled them into small balls, flattening them into 4 slightly different sizes. Then a bigger ball for the middle paw pad, flattened and dented a little on 3 sides.

When you're ready to stick on your decorations, dab a little glue onto the paw (not the cake) and stick gently to the iced cake top, and position however you like.

Then stick your kittens on top. I put quite a bit of glue on the base and also on the tails and put them in position, then held them for a few minutes to make sure they stayed in place.

Obviously you don't have to do the same as mine, or you can use different colours for your own cats.

Either way I think it makes a unique birthday cake which is also personal.

Happy Baking!

Any questions, please message me or add my instagram - chobits182