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How to Build a 3D Tux Cake
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Step 8: Feet and beak
Before you start with this, you may want to move Tux from the turntable to his final resting place. I used my best dark plastic faux-granite cutting board, which just happened to be the same height as the turntable. I worked a large (and I mean large) spatula between the bottom cake round and the turntable, and used that to give the cake a little lift and a little less traction. Then, using gloves so as not to fingerprint everything, three of us carefully slid Tux onto the cutting board.
Now, you'll need a couple of batches of Rice Krispy Treats. They're just about the easiest thing in the world to make, but if you don't want to, you can buy it by the sheet in some cake decorating shops. One batch will be just enough to cut out the feet, and the other will give you enough for the beak, with some to spare. Now that you have the hang of sculpting cake, it shouldn't be too hard to cut out the feet. If you've let your Rise Krispy Treats cool properly, they should cut easily with a serrated knife. If you really need a guide, go ahead and print out a copy of Tux's foot and use it as a template. You'll want each foot to be about six to seven inches long. But get some good practice with the feet, because you're pretty much going to have to freehand the beak. The nice thing about Rice Krispy Treats is that if you cut too much away, you can just mold a scrap back on. It's very pliable stuff. I had to mold a lot onto the top and bottom of the beak, since it was too flat initially.
Now that you have the feet and beak shaped, you need to get them covered too. Take the rest of your white modelling chocolate and knead some yellow food coloring into it. It may feel a little greasy, but don't worry about it. You can dab at it with a paper towel if you want, but it won't hurt anything. When it's nice and yellow, go ahead and roll it out and cover the feet and beak with it. To be honest, the beak was so irregular, it didn't seem to matter much whether or not I rolled it out; I ended up having to mold and smooth most if it by hand anyway.
Now, you'll want to use the skewers to attach the feet and beak. In the photos, you may see that I used skewers on the top and bottom of the feet. This was a bad idea. It ended up showing at the top, so I moved the skewers there to the bottom. Make sure you use at least three skewers on everything. I attached the skewers to the feet and beak first, with the pointy end out, and then pushed them into the cake. You may want to poke holes manually where the skewers are going to be before you do this, so that they don't poke out through the modelling chocolate. If they do, just push them back in and smooth out the holes with a little spare modelling chocolate.
We may look like we're done, but we still need to give Tux that smile. If you saved any buttercream, you can color it black and pipe it out into a smile on top of his beak. I cheated and used storebought black icing. You could also roll a really thin snake out of black modelling chocolate and attach it with corn syrup.
