sea lion ahoy!

chocolate cake with vanilla bean buttercream

This Sea Lion cake and accompanying cupcakes were for Amelia's 8th birthday party at the Prospect Park Zoo. I can't remember what I did when I turned 8, but it certainly couldn't have been as cool as having your party at a zoo.

I carved the sea lion's body out of cake, but his head was Krispies. I did a test run with this fellow because I've never done a Sea Lion before and I wanted to experiment with his body shape and his massive flippers. In all honesty, he doesn't look quite look like an actual sea lion. He's a little cartoonish because that's my style---I grew up copying Garfield comic strips, so I like things with rounded edges and a chubby look. I tried a billion different things for his whiskers, but couldn't get them to look natural and ended up leaving them off altogether. He was still pretty cute, though, and I thought the color palette was lovely.

The Sea Lion with just a buttercream coating, with his fondant skin in place
and lastly, headless, so you can see the Krispies interior.

Amelia's mom, Roxy, is an amazing illustrator, and she drew the sea lion on the actual invitations. I tried to use her lovely drawing and colors as inspiration. You can see more of Roxy's work here.