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Finished Playful Kitten Cake featuring a black fondant kitten on a pink yarn ball and white fondant base.

Playful Kitten Cake Recipe

Delight every cat lover at your next celebration with this Playful Kitten Cake, a soft, sweet, and wonderfully detailed fondant creation that’s almost too cute to slice.

Course: Cake
Cuisine: International
Prep Time: 3 hours
Cook Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 4 hours
Servings: 1 x 18cm-7 inches cake
Author: Manuela Zangara

Ingredients

  • 1½ yogurt cakes*
  • Coloured fondant – white, pink, black
  • Edible glue
  • Icing – for crumb coating
  • Icing sugar or corn starch – for dusting

Instructions

Making the Yarn Ball

  1. Bake the yogurt cakes in advance and freeze them until needed.
  2. Begin with the yarn of wool. Level and sandwich the two half-spherical cakes to form a ball. Cover it with a thin layer of vanilla icing and refrigerate to harden slightly.
  3. Roll out pink fondant and cover the cake ball. Don’t worry about making it perfectly smooth, as it will be covered by the fondant strings later.
  4. Load a sugarcraft gun with fondant and use the medium round disc. Push out long fondant strings and lay them close together. Trim one end into a small triangle, as shown in the photos. Brush edible glue on one side of the cake ball and attach the triangle end. Repeat on the opposite side.
  5. Make more fondant strings with the sugarcraft gun. Brush the ball with edible glue and lay the strings across it. Repeat in the opposite direction until the entire ball is covered. Let it firm up slightly. Keep any leftover fondant to make extra strings later.

Shaping the Kitten

  1. To make the kitten, roll some fondant into a teardrop shape for the body. Roll a ball for the head, four little sausages for the legs, and a thinner one for the tail. Stick them all together with edible glue, then make two small triangles for the ears.
  2. Roll three tiny white fondant balls for each leg to form the paws and attach them with glue. For the eyes, roll a small white ball and add a smaller black ball on top.
  3. For the mouth, roll a small white fondant ball, flatten it, and use an X-Acto knife to make thin whisker cuts. Use a little pink fondant for the inside of the ears and the nose.
  4. Once the kitten is fully assembled, leave it to dry completely. When firm, stick it on top of the yarn of wool with some edible glue and set aside until needed.

Assembling the Cake

  1. The day before the party, prepare the base cake. Make icing for crumb coating (use your preferred recipe, but keep it slightly soft so it spreads easily). Remove the round yogurt cake from the freezer and level it with a sharp serrated knife while still frozen.

  2. Place some icing in the centre of the cake board and position the cake (smooth side up). Cover the top and sides with a thin crumb coat, smoothing with a spatula. Chill to harden.

    Note: You can also crumb coat the cake before transferring it to the board. This helps the fondant sit smoothly and prevents crumbs from showing through.

Decorating and Finishing

  1. Once the icing has set, roll out the white fondant and cover both the cake and the cake board. Smooth with a fondant smoother and trim off the excess. Let it dry for a couple of hours.
  2. Attach the yarn ball to the top of the cake with edible glue. Roll out small fondant circles for the paw prints and stick them onto the cake.
  3. Finish with an extra fondant string that wraps around the kitten and drapes down one side of the cake.

Recipe Notes

*Baked in one 18 cm – 7 inches deep round pan and two 6 cm – 2.5 inches half-sphere pans; one cake may be enough.