Growing up, my mom had a recipe book that was full of homemade birthday cakes. One of my fondest childhood memories is going through the book each August and picking out the cake that would help me ring in the next year. They were always unique and so much fun. She saved the book and passed it down to me this past summer before Sprout turned one. I’m so excited to pass down the tradition and have Sprout pick out her cake each year.
This year, I wanted something that was cute and unique that I could spend time doing to celebrate her first birthday. My first birthday cake was a bunny, but that didn’t seem to fit Sprout’s sassy personality quite right. We live in a community with a lot of foxes and she’s always fascinated when she sees them. A fox cake seemed like the perfect fit – only problem was that I couldn’t find a pattern (in the legendary cake book OR in the depths of the internet). So I decided to make one myself.
For the printable PDF of the pattern, click here. This pattern fits on 2, 9×13 inch cakes. It’s meant to be printed on regular. 8.5×11 inch paper.
I used the Best of Bridge’s Karrot’s Cake recipe. It is hands-down, the best carrot cake that I’ve ever had in my life. No weird pineapple, no nuts to be a choking hazard for a 1-year-old, just good, delicious cake. The recipe can be found here.
Note that this recipe calls for two cakes – so I doubled the cake recipe and doubled the batch of cream cheese frosting. I definitely had some frosting left over, but in general, I’d say I frost on the light side.
I split the frosting about into two piles – I kept about 1/3 of it white, and I dyed about 2/3 of it orange. I used Watkins All Natural Food Coloring to turn the icing orange. I’m not sure if it was the natural food colouring or just that it’s hard to make bright orange icing, but the orange I got was definitely more pastel than fox orange. I honestly didn’t measure the food colouring, I just added the red and yellow until I got a colour that I was happy with.
I love that Sprout’s birthday is in the summer – but so far, I’ve identified two significant downsides: 1) Being 40+ weeks pregnant during the hottest weeks of the year does not make for a cheery, super-pregnant Jenna; and 2) Turning on the oven the bake a birthday cake during the hottest weeks of the year in a house with no air conditioning is a bad idea. I have been known to bake pies on the BBQ during the July heatwave to avoid turning on the oven, but I wasn’t quite ready to risk doing my daughter’s first birthday cake in there…
Lucky for me (and the rest of the household), we had a cool, rainy day a couple of days before Sprout’s birthday. I took advantage of the cooler weather to bake the cakes and then covered them in plastic wrap in the freezer for a couple of days before her party.
The day of the party, I assembled and frosted the fox. It definitely took me a couple of hours, so I was very glad to have my parents and Spencer around to help wrangle Sprout.
I took the cakes out of the freezer immediately before starting, and I’d say the more frozen they are, the easier it will be to cut, assemble, and frost.
I started by placing the pattern cutouts on the cakes and tracing around them with a toothpick. This worked really well. It’s hard to see in the photo, but it left enough of a mark that I could see where to make the cuts. I used a small serrated knife and I think it was the best tool for the job.
You may have noticed that there is only one leg cutout in the pattern – this is because I cut it in half to make the legs. I thought they would look a little skimpy doing this, but they really turned out just right.
This is what the cake look liked pre-frosting. I should say. I am NOT an artist. Like, at all. And I’m not going to lie, prior to this point I was a little bit worried that know one would no what the cake was supposed to be. But once I got here, I was pretty excited that I may actually be successful in my fox cake endeavour!
Here’s when I took the legs and tail back off and iced the body and head with a “crumb coat.” I’ve never really decorated a cake before, but the wise internet told me that a thin layer of icing over the whole cake will keep the crumbs in and make it easier to decorate. I’m honestly not sure if this actually did anything, but the cake turned out, so who am I to say it was useless? After the crumb coat, I put the whole thing back in the freezer to harden again. Tail and legs went in as well.
I ended up leaving it in the freezer for about an hour, but it probably would have been okay to work with again after about 30 minutes. During that time, I mixed some of the extra cake (that had been cut off) with some icing and fashioned it into a cone. This made the fox’s nose. I also put this in the freezer to harden before frosting.
I frosted in stages. First white, then orange, then the tail. I ended up buying a tube of black frosting for the legs and other details. Black food colouring just wasn’t something I wanted to mess around with.
And voila! Here’s our Fox Cake! I’m honestly so thrilled with how he turned out. And, he was delicious to boot!
Please let me know if you end up trying the pattern! I’d love to see our foxes from all over!