Hotdog Birthday Cake

Do you ever have an inspiration to make a cake that looks like something out of the blue? Well here you are, a hotdog birthday cake.

When February turned up with an Uncle's birthday I thought, "How about a hotdog shaped cake?" I ended up looking online for a good recipe, and could find no full recipe without tons of fondant and difficult shaping. I also needed a cake that fed around 15 people. Hopefully this recipe will get your creative juices flowing and a fun cake (without to much difficulty) for someone's special birthday. Let's get baking!

Ingredients:

1. Two yellow cake mixes
2. Vegetable shortening
3. Around 6 eggs
4. Water
5. Vegetable oil
6. Two containers of store-bought vanilla frosting
7. Red, blue and yellow food coloring
8. https://www.biggerbolderbaking.com/how-to-make-rolled-fondant/

Depending on the cake mix you get, there will be different amounts of ingredients and instructions to bake it. Most mixes call for eggs, water and oil. You can also try other mixes such as chocolate or strawberry.

This recipe turned out very sweet and rich. If you want to make a quick and easy cake by just buying premade frosting, go for it! But if you have more time, making your own buttercream frosting can be substantially better as you can control the amount of sugar put in and can get better texture.

The fondant has some hard-to-find ingredients. I found glycerin on Amazon. Just look this up: HUMCO Glycerin USP Grade Ointment, 6 Fl Oz, Pure, Natural, Pure Vegetable Based, Skin Care. A small purple bottle should show up.

The recipe and ingredients for fondant can be found through the link posted in the list. Down below are important notes on how to make it without disaster.

As to materials, most of the time you can find a material in baking that works just as well without buying a new one. I encourage you to put creativity to work and maybe... reuse a bowl after a rinse out, or hand stir instead of electrically. Of course if you have the right materials, go ahead and use them! For this project a spatula, glass bowls, and a metal pan will probably come the most in handy.

Follow instructions on the back of the cake mix box or bag.

1. Make sure to bake the cakes in a 13" x 9" pan. There should be a chart on the back of the mix giving different times and pan shapes for how long to bake the cake. Check for the 13" x 9".
2. Do not forget to grease the pans. I used vegetable shortening on a folded paper-towel and spread it across the pans. Make sure to really get in the corners and middle.
3. Some tips and tricks to cracking eggs: Get a seperate bowl and hit the middle of an egg gently against the side of the bowl. Once there is a visible crack, take the two halves across the crack and pull apart over the bowl. If any shell falls into the bowl as well, take one of the now empty halves and try to scoop out the egg shell. Using a shell works better than your fingers.
4. Stir the batter until there are no more lumps.
5. Let the cakes cool fully before taking them out of the pan!
6. If there is trouble taking the cake out of the pan, don't despair. Carefully cut around the edges with a butter knife. If needed, take a thin flipping spatula and lift up the sides slowly. Take your time and have patience.

The fondant is the hardest thing to make and I hope you find these tips helpful. When I looked at other hotdog cake recipes, most of them were only covered in fondant. I do not enjoy fondant that much, and neither does my family. So I decided to make only the "sausage" with fondant to give it a smooth look. The recipe can be found in the link above.

Some tips and tricks:

1. Make half the recipe by dividing all the measurements for ingredients in half.
2. When combining the gelatin and cold water, let sit until an almost jello like substance appears.
3. For a double boiler use a metal saucepan with about an inch of water in the bottom. Place a glass bowl over the top. Make sure the glass bowl does not touch the water and fits around the edges. Place the boiler over the stove and set to medium heat.
4. How do you know when the gelatin is dissolved in the double boiler? Stir it until it is watery and no longer thick or grainy.
5. To make a well in the powdered sugar, flatten out the sugar then spoon sugar out from the middle to the sides.
6. Do not start kneading the fondant with your hands if it is still liquidy or sticky at all! This is a serious mistake I made. It will stick to your hands and result in the loss of around half the mixture.
7. Slowly add powdered sugar and water to make it the right consistancy. If you just can't get it right, refrigerate it in an airtight container for 30 minutes. It should be a little less sticky when cold, but make sure to add powdered sugar before touching it.
8. If you are getting fondant layers that peel away, that is because you have to much powdered sugar. It also helps to make your hands damp and then knead the fondant. If the fondant is to wet, it will stick to your hands. Just add more powdered sugar in that case.

1. Take the two cakes out of the pans.
2. Stack them upside down on top of eachother, on a metal pan.
3. Make the outline for a rectangle about one inch wide down the length of the top cake. Cut the rectangle out. Only cut from the top cake! Set the rectangle of cake carefully aside.
4. Open one of the frosting canisters and spread a reasonable layer between the cake left over on the top and the bottom cake layer.
5. Spread a crumb layer over the top cake layer. To do this, spread frosting very thinly over the cake. Any crumbs should be caught up in that layer.

Have fun with this part and make the cake uniquely yours!

Sausage:

1. First, take your fondant and knead drops of red food coloring into it until you get a desired shade of "sausage". A few drops of yellow dye, help make it a brownish color. Make sure to do this on a protected surface as it will stain!
2. With a rolling pin, roll the fondant out on a flat surface once you have the desired color. Roll until about a 1/4 inch thick.
3. Take the rectangle of cake that was set aside and place inside the rolled fondant. Cut the fondant around the cake until it can wrap around the cake piece snuggly. Make sure to cut a rectangular shape bigger than the cake piece! Leave some fondant at the ends, and cut big before getting smaller.
4. Once the fondant is cut, lift the long edges to meet around the cake. Pinch the fondant seam to secure it. (I actually did not end up wrapping the fondant this way, as seen from the pictures. I regret it because the fondant came out to thick and lumpy.)
5. Close up the ends and cut tiny slit marks like a star with a knife to show the ends of an authentic "sausage".
6. Place the "sausage" in the empty rectangle area on the top layer.

Bun:

1. You should have left-over frosting from spreading the crumb layer. Take that frosting and add around 3 drops of yellow food coloring and 1 drop of red. A brownish bun color should appear.
2. Spread the frosting over the top layer of cake that now has that crumb layer.

Toppings:

1. To make the mustard, take three spoonfuls of frosting and place in the bottom corner of a plastic sandwich bag.
2. Add around three drops of yellow food coloring and squeeze over a sink till fully mixed. Make sure the bag is sealed! Try to keep the frosting all in one corner.
3. Take some scissors, and cut a little bit of the bag off of the corner where the frosting is. Cut it at a slight angle.
4. Squeeze the "mustard" down the "sausage" in a wavy pattern.
5. To make the "ketchup" and "relish" do steps 1. through 3. over again for each one. To make the right colors add only red dye to the "ketchup" and blue and yellow dye for green "relish."
6. Squeeze the ketchup straight down the "sausage."
7. Squeeze the "relish" in dots and curls down the "sausage" to make a chunky effect.
8. I only added "mustard," "ketchup" and "relish" created out of frosting. If you want to invent some more toppings (eg. chili, onions,...) play around with the colors and frosting till you get what's desired.

Wipe the crumbs around the pan's edge off with a paper towel, stick some birthday candles into the cake, and your cake is ready to present! Tada! The best hotdog birthday cake created by you!