"What am I thinking? I can't eat this whole thing by myself!"

April brought with it the birthday of my coworker Coryn. Coryn has a deep, deep love for all things Pandas. Thus, the choice for her birthday cake was clear. I went online and looked at different drawings of pandas and found a design I thought I could do well. I opted for a more cartoonistic look over a realistic one since my skills are just not that good.

Method:
       Cake: To match the panda colors, I chose to make this a cookies and cream cake. The method for this was to simply crush up a bunch of cookies and mix them into a white cake mix. I baked a 9x13 pan and two 8" rounds to make the cake. The head was made of the two rounds, and the body was made with half the 9x13 stacked on itself. I had to use paper cut down to scale to play with the pieces until I could make it fit and look right. It helped that the look of the panda was cartoonish so I had some leeway.
       Frosting: This was my first attempt at making a cooked frosting. I started by making a Roux base and then adding in regular grain sugar, etc. It tasted good and was the perfect level of sweetness. It did have a hint of flour in the flavor, which I didn't care for as much, but it sure beat the greasy coating of homemade buttercream made with all shortening. The layers of the cake were filled with frosting and the sprinkled with more cookie crumbles. The black frosting was store bought since it's not easy to recreate that color at home.
       Other Decorations: I made the eyes with large marshmallows cut in half, and upside down chocolate chips for the pupil. It turned out pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself.

I put the cake on Coryn's desk the next morning at work. It took her a good half hour of having it take up half her desk space to decide that she probably should share it and not keep it for herself. Here is what she said, "What am I thinking? I can't eat this whole thing by myself."The rest of the office was grateful that she came to her senses:-D