I am a complete newbie here! I started a few weeks ago making some cake just at home hoping that by March 17th that I will be able to successfully make my daughter a descent cake for her 2nd birthday. I have been practicing smoothing my buttercream but now I need decorating suggestions.

I want to make a cake with some puppy dogs. I would love to make fondant/gumpaste dogs but don't feel I would be able to master that well before her birthday. Does anyone know of the "easiest" possible method to do this? Is this difficult to master? Does anyone make, sell, and ship these? I live in the western part of Kentucky.

I have been thinking of printing out a coloring book page of a dog and putting wax paper over it to copy and color the image, freeze the image, then carefully peel the image off to place on the cake. Is this what everyone refers to as a "frozen transfer?" What type of icing would work best for this? I tried it with the crusting buttercream only to find it crumbled apart when trying to pull if off the wax paper. I found a buttercream recipe called "Buttercream Icing for Frozen Transfers." Is this what I should use? Does royal icing work on this? Any other suggestions.

I also want to print out in MS Word the words of "Happy Birthday" doing the same exact procedure. I am horrible at free-hand work!! Will this work with the same type of icing?

Thanks so much!!!! Your cake photos are so inspiring to me and I would love to become as talented as all of you!! But, to start with, I need the simplest and most easiest methods to master to get my daughter's cake done! She is my absolute pride and joy! After 7 years of infertility, we finally got the call from our adoption agency and our little girl was born!! Sorry, that's off topic but I want my daughter to have a very special cake.

Thanks for the help!!!

Carol

this is a great tutorial for a FBCT
http://forum.cakecentral.com/article12-How-To-Create-a-Frozen-Buttercream-Transfer.html
maybe you can figure out where you went wrong.

You can do the same thing with royal icing, except that you dont flip it over, so the top stays the top KWIM? Also dont put it in the fridge, let it dry for a few days.
A tutorial for a colourflow
http://www.ladycakes.com/colorflow_-_pumpkin.htm
HTH!!!

It is not hard to make a fondant dog/puppy On the home page of this site, scroll down a bit to find a video on 'how to make a tiny teddy beard' by aine2. She has other videos on YouTube for puppy and more. Also you can use Polymer clay books for instructions. Fondant &/or gumpaste is basically the same as clay and used the same way for making figures. Check out your local library or bookstore for Sculpy/polymer clay figures.