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Sloth Cake Tutorial
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Sep 6, 2024
In this cake decorating tutorial I share how to assemble, sculpt, and frost this adorable sloth cake! I used 6 inch cake layers for this but you can use 4" layers or even cupcakes - find out how to turn cupcakes into cake here: http://www.britishgirlbakes.com/how-to-turn-cupcakes-into-cake/ I used my 4 Minute Buttercream frosting for this cake and for the recipe and tutorial click here: http://www.britishgirlbakes.com/recipes/buttercream-frosting/ Click here for my recipe and tutorial for my Perfect Chocolate Cake: http://www.britishgirlbakes.com/recipes/perfect-chocolate-cake/ I used this textured cake comb: https://amzn.to/32zMElV SUBSCRIBE to my channel for new cake decorating tutorials every week! If you buy any of the products I've linked out to, the price you pay won't change but I will make a small commission on anything you buy. Thank you for helping to keep the British Girl Bakes tutorials FREE!
View Video Transcript
0:00
I'm very excited to share this adorable and easy sloth cake with you
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It looks like it would be difficult and time consuming to make, but it's actually very simple, requiring basic tools
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and it's surprisingly quick to assemble, frost and decorate. I'm using nine frozen layers of cake for this
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and they're six inches wide each and about an inch and a half tall
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You can make this much smaller by using smaller cake layers or even cupcakes cut in half horizontally
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Start by assembling your cake on a cakeboard a few inches bigger bigger than the cake by alternating cake and fillings, and I'm using my perfect chocolate
0:34
cake and my 4-minute buttercream mixed with melted chocolate, and the links for both
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recipes are below this video. I'll explain why the cakes are frozen in a minute
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You'll need support for every 6 inches of height, which means pushing a straw or dowel down
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into the cake all the way down until it hits the cake board, pinching the point where it reaches
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the top of the cake, pulling it out and cutting it at that point
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way it's the same height as the cake. Then hold it against three more straws or
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dowls to measure them to be exactly the same height. When you place these
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straws or dowels you'll need them to be about two inches in from the edge of the
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cake so that they're anchored securely in the cake and so that you can trim the
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cakes you place on top but they'll still be sitting on these straws. Cut all
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of these straws or dowels and then push them into the cake to make support
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beams for the cakes that will sit on top. I use four support
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for a six inch cake, and for larger cakes I'd use a more secure system, but if you're using
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six inch cakes or smaller, this is fine. Place another cake board on top of the cake you've built
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so far and spread on some buttercream to attach your next layer of cake. This board should be
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an inch or two smaller than the cakes, because you're going to trim the cakes in a minute
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so they'll be smaller too. The board will rest on top of the straws or dowels
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so that any weight you put on top with these next layers of cake will be supported by the
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straws or dowls, so they won't press down on the cake below the board and those cakes won't
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sink down. Continue layering your cake and filling, and when you're finished, it's time to shape
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the cake. Use a serrated knife to carve the top section into a sphere, which will be the head
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of the sloth. It's easiest to carve cakes when they're cold because they're firmer and less
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crumbly, which is why I'm using frozen cake layers. By the time you've assembled your cake and
2:24
you're ready to carve it, the layers will have started to thaw, so they won't be so much
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frozen that they're difficult to cut, but they will still be nice and cold to make for easy
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carving. If you have space in your fridge or freezer big enough to chill the entire cake
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after assembling it, but before carving it, that's perfect. You don't have to use frozen cake
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layers then but I assuming you don have that much space in your fridge To carve a sphere I start by cutting it diagonals to trim off large sections of the cake to make a very angular round shape
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and then using smaller cutting motions to trim those down to round them out and make a curved surface on the cake
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You can see that even with hundreds of these back and forth carving motions, the cake might wobble, but the top section is staying securely on top of the bottom section
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because of the support straws. So it's not going to lean over to one side, even with this pressure again
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now mark where the arms are going to be, choosing where the inner edge of the arm will be and carving out a bit of cake there to make an indent
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I'm taking my final layer of cake and cutting it in half to make two semicircles and these will be the sloth's legs
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Trim the flat edge to make it curved so that it sits right up against the body and then spread on some buttercream onto the bottom of the cake and on the side you've just trimmed
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to act as glue to attach it to the side of the cake, and to stick down onto the cakeboard
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Trim these to be the size you want the legs to be, and making sure that they're not hanging over the edge of the cakeboard
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and use the offcuts to make the hands, resting on top of the feet, attaching them with a bit more buttercream
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Don't worry about carving these to be smooth because you're going to cover this all up with buttercream fur later
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which will give the legs the shape you want. You'll need more buttercream for the frosting, a little bit of plain white, but much more buttercream, but more
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mostly brown, and I'm using chocolate to make my buttercream brown for the fur, but you can
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use brown colouring instead. I'll talk about options for your cake board in a moment. Spread white
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buttercream onto the middle of the sloth's face, just a thin layer as a crumb coat to trap
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in any crumbs that come off the cake so that they don't get into your final coat of frosting
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Spread brown buttercream over the rest of the cake except for the hands and feet, which we're
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going to make white as well. Since the cake should still be cold, it should be easy to spread
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buttercream onto it without pulling crumbs off. But if you're struggling, add some milk
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or cream to your buttercream to thin it out, and then it should be easier to spread
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Spread the buttercream side to side over the cake, lifting your spatula the fewest times
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possible, and when you do have to lift the spatula off to get more buttercream, swipe
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it off sideways, instead of lifting it straight up off the cake, because that might pull
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crumbs or chunks of cake off with it. Now about the cake board. The board needs to be big enough
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to fit the original cake layers, so six inches wide for my cake, but also a few inches bigger
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to fit the legs that you add on afterwards. And you'll want it to be a few inches bigger than that
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so that there's a border around the cake where you can add grass or a message. So for my
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cake made with six inch layers I placing the cake on a 12 inch cake board If you have a cake drum which is thicker and stronger that best so that it supports the weight of the cake But if you don you can build the cake on one cake
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board and attach that to another cake board with a little roll of masking tape, so that it's thicker
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and stronger. After covering your cake completely with this first layer of buttercream
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let the butter cream set for about 30 minutes, and meanwhile, make the facial details of the sloth
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This is black butter cream in a Ziploc bag and I'm cutting a corner off the bag and squeezing some butter cream out into a circle on a piece of wax paper, or you can use parchment paper instead
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You'll need three circles, a big one for the nose and two slightly smaller ones for the eyes
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Chill these in the fridge or freezer for a few minutes until they start to set, and then use a piece of parchment or wax paper to flatten and smooth the top surface of each circle
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Use the end of a paintbrush or another round pointed object to imprint two nostrils into the sloth's nose
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Then use white buttercream in a Ziploc bag with the corner cut off to pipe little white reflections on the eyes
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You can use piping bags with round piping tips for the big black dots and the small white dots if you have them
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Put them back in the fridge or freezer when you finished. When the crumb coat has set, which traps the crumbs into that coat of frosting, spread another layer of buttercream on top
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on top. You could have just used white buttercream for the crumb coat, but by using brown
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and white, you've already figured out where the sloth's face is going to be and where its hands
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and feet are going to be. Do this a section at a time so that the buttercream doesn't set before
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you imprint fur into it. I'm starting with the head, using brown buttercream everywhere except
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for on the front of the face, and then I'm using this zigzag textured cake comb to imprint
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fur into the buttercream, scraping from the white part of the face out towards the brown
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to blend the colours together a bit more gradually, and then using texture all over the white part
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of the face and the rest of the brown head. If you don't have a zigzag cake comb like this
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you can use a fork instead. I've put the link for this textured cake comb in the video description
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As you're using the comb, if you scrape through the buttercream to expose the cake underneath
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just spread a bit more buttercream on and then use a textured cake comb over that area
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again. Before I continue with the body, I'm going to add the details of the face
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starting by using this chocolate buttercream that I've added a lot more melted
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chocolate to, to make it a darker shade of brown. I'm piping it onto the face to make
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brown patches around the eyes, and I'm using a Ziploc bag for this to show you
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how to do this with minimal tools, but you could use a piping bag and round tip
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instead. Spread the buttercream with an offset spatula to flatten it against the frosting so that it's not sticking out, and do you can
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and you can texture it with the textured comb as well if you like You can do the face at the end after frosting the whole cake with fur but I excited to see how the face will turn out so I doing it first Add a big patch of dark brown for the snout of the sloth and then immediately while
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this buttercream is still fresh and sticky, take the eyes and nose out of the fridge
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or freezer and peel them off the paper and press them into the buttercream
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Make sure the white dots in the eyes are pointing in the same direction, unless you want
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your sloth to look cross-eyed or confused. I'm adding a little bit more buttercream to the top of the cake to make some fur sticking up
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and then moving down to the body of the sloth. I'm doing the white parts first, the hands and feet, spreading the butter cream fairly smoothly
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with my offset spatula and then imprinting the fingers or toes with a chopstick
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You could use the edge of your offset spatula or frosting smoother for this, or a wooden skewer
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or even a toothpick. Now I'm spreading brown buttercream onto the rest of the body to completely cover it, spreading it quite thick
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but not worrying about getting it smooth at all, and then using my textured cake comb to make it look like fur
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I love this technique for making fur because it's super easy, but also it's so intentionally messy that you can't really go wrong
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If you don't scrape deep enough into the frosting with your cake comb, you can just scrape over the area again more deeply
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and if you scrape too deeply, just spread on some more butter cream to cover that area and then scrape again
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For the section of the body in between the feet, it's too narrow to fit my cake comb comfortably
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so I'm using the end of my chopstick to scratch grooves into the fur instead
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To cover up the cakeboard, I'm using some green butter cream, spreading it all over the cakeboard with my offset spatula
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I'm going right up to the edge of the cake, and it's fine for the green to ride up around the sides of the cake a bit
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like some blades of grass would stick up around the sauce in reality
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I'm using my offset spatula to create texture in the cake. the grass, pressing it down flat on the buttercream and then pulling it up to bring up peaks
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of buttercream with it that look a bit like grass. You could pipe green buttercream onto the
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cake board using a piping bag fitted with a grass tip instead, but it would be much more time consuming
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This is easier and I really like the effect. Okay, my final detail for this cake is to make
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the arms more obvious, because although I carved them out of the cake body, with all of the
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frosting on top, they've got a bit lost in the rest of the sloth's body. I'm using the
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very dark brown buttercream that I used for the face and piping a little bit of it down
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each side of each arm and I'm using the end of a paint brush to smudge it into the rest of
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the fur so that it looks like shadows. And there he is, my adorable and delicious sloth cake
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I'd recommend keeping this in the fridge until two to four hours before you eat it
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And if you're going to transport it, keep it in the fridge until you go. Thanks for
11:07
watching. Please click the thumbs up button and subscribe to my channel for a new cake decorating tutorial every week
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