Daniel Tiger Cake

Prepare the cakes for decorating: Spoon your vanilla frosting into a bowl and add a few drops of orange gel food coloring until the desired hue is reached. Crumb coat the 2 unfrosted cupcakes and round cake with a layer of frosting and allow them to sit in the refrigerator for about an hour. Frost your cake with the orange frosting and smooth as desired.

Make Daniel’s ears: Using the top, outer circle of a mason jar lid (a circle cookie cutter or small bowl work just as well), remove two, arc-shaped pieces from the top of your circular cake and place the two cupcakes inside…these will be Daniel’s ears.

Make Daniel’s eyes: Break apart two oreo cookies and with a knife, slowly slice the white center out of the oreo cookie. Add two chocolate candy melts to the bottom of each oreo filling circle.

With your mason jar outer circle, make an indentation at the bottom corner of each ‘eye’ to create the shape of Daniel Tiger’s eyes and with your cake server, slowly add the two eyes to the front of your Daniel face.

Make Daniel’s stripes: Take your brown fondant paper and using the kitchen knife as your guide, create six ‘Tiger Stripes’ in varying sizes with your pizza roller or fondant cutter.

Next, use the cake server as a guide and create another tiger stripe for the top middle of Daniel’s head and place all the stripes around the cake, trimming them with scissors as needed to fit onto Daniel’s face.

Make Daniel’s eyebrows, nose line and mouth: Cut two small pieces of licorice and add them over the eyes to make “eyebrows”. Cut a small nose line & mouth out of licorice and add it to Daniel’s face as well.

Make Daniel’s nose: Melt your piece of pink starburst candy in the microwave for a few seconds until it is pliable and easy to shape. Shape it into a triangle, trim it with a knife to give it a clean edge, and add it to the front of your cake to make Daniel’s “nose”.

Make Daniel’s whiskers: With your white icing writer, draw whiskers onto Daniel’s face.

Finally, using your cake spatula, add the remaining orange frosting around the cupcakes and smooth and you are all set!