When the going gets tough, the tough bake poodles

The $18.00 cake (photo by author)

It's been a busy week at our house, gearing up for an eighth birthday and party for my daughter.  Being a kid who knows her own mind, she determined that she wanted a "Pink Poodle Party"...and that was that.  The theme had been established, the gauntlet thrown down, and now, as The Mom, I had to figure out how to meet her grand expectations on a shoestring budget.  Who has money these days? It was time to get creative. 

The piece de resistance is always the cake.  The internet is an incredible repository for ideas for the average baker, and I found more than enough great ideas.  Flickr.com is an excellent tool for seeking out inspiration, and it was there that I found the Poodles in Paris cake from the Glass Slipper Gourmet.   Her skills are amazing and I can only dream of having her talent, but we gave it our best shot. 

Amazingly our cake turned out wonderfully, and we had never used fondant before.  It cost us less than $20.00 to make... a far cry from the $75-plus quotes we had received from several Wichita cake decorators. 

• We purchased ready-to-roll fondant from a local Hobby Lobby store ($6.98), along with pink and black professional food colorings ($1.99 each).  The polka dots were cut out with round cookie cutters ($2), and we cut out the small white poodles from hand
• I used a cake recipe from my own stash, and frosted it with from-a-can buttercream frosting before placing the fondant on top.
• Instead of buying fancy cake icing tools, we used ziplock baggies and snipped off one corner of the bag for the various sizes of frosting effects needed.  This worked particularly well for the poodles!
• My husband created a cut-out stencil for the Eiffel Tower, and then painstakingly cut it out from four Hershey chocolate bars for less than $2.  He melted the leftover candy pieces and then "glued" the tower together with the hot chocolate.
• Our pink poodle was an old Happy Meal toy - "free" cake topper! 
• The Wilton site was a wealth of knowledge for free how-to's, complete with visual aids for the cake-decorating novices (like me).