Turtle Cake

It's my friend Krystal's birthday this Thursday and so all the girls are going out for dinner. As a surprise, I thought it would be fun to make her a awesome cake but I really had no idea what. At first I thought I would make her a Star Wars cake maybe of Chewbacca just because she has recently only started watching Star Wars and told me she really liked it but then I wasn't sure if she was a big enough fan to want it as a birthday cake. So after hours to thinking and researching I decided to make her a turtle cake just because that's what my little sister calls her as she always has a turtle expression/pose for photos.

I began by looking up a whole heap of turtle cakes on Google and YouTube. After a couple of hours of research I felt confident in knowing how I wanted to construct my turtle cake. 

 To make the chocolate cake for this turtle cake, I only used the store bought cake mixes rather than baking from scratch just because I find it takes too long to bake a cake from scratch then wait for it to cool so I can begin frosting the cake. 

For the turtle cake, I used two boxes of the Duncan Hines moist chocolate cake mix that I bought from my local Woolworths for only $ 2.99 per box. I have never use any Duncan Hines cake mixes before but after today, I think I would definitely use it again. The recipe was easy to follow and the cake was super delicious and moist. Another thing I really liked about this cake mix was the amount of detail of how long the cake should be cooked for depending on the size of you dish. However, the only thing I think I can fail about this cake mix is  the fact the the temperature of the oven is written in fahrenheit but that problem was easily solved by my good friend Google. 

Equipment required to make the turtle cake. 

* One large Pyrex mixing bowl (for the shell of the turtle)

* One oven proof bowl (for the head of the turtle)

* Four muffin moulds (for the four legs)

1. Begin by mixing up your cake mix

2. Separate into all the greased dishes as required. It may be easier to begin by pouring the mixture into the muffin tins then the small bowl (for the head) and finally the large mixing bowl (for the shell) to ensure you have enough batter.

3.  Place all the dishes in the oven and cook for as long as required. Keep in mind that the muffin sized cake mix will cook faster as it is smaller.

4. Once all the batter has been cooked, wait until it is all cooled before removing from the molds. Organise the cakes as shown in the picture below.

5. Begin by icing the shell of the turtle green. I used the Duncan Hines Vanilla frosting and added some green colouring into it. Mix well to ensure the colour is distributed evenly. This also softens the icing mixture so it is easier to spread.

( It does not matter if you don't spread the green frosting on smoothly as it adds to the texture of the turtle shell and will also be covered with shards of chocolate later. )

6. Apply the rest of the body parts with some brown chocolate frosting. 

7. Crack up the shards of chocolate and place them on the green frosting as you see appropriate. To temper chocolate, refer to this awesome YouTube tutorial.

I used Mentos as the eyes for my turtles eyes and attached brown mini M&M's onto it using frosting. I also used the left over green frosting to draw a face on my turtle.