A Turtle Treat for a Terrific Teacher - October 2008

I made this turtle cake for Caleb's 1st grade teacher.  A few weeks after school started Caleb came home and told me that his teacher had been in a bad car accident when someone ran a red light and hit her.  She had a broken back among other injuries.  After almost a month she came to school to see her class and talk to them about some things since she'd be coming back soon.  She showed them the brace, called a turtle shell, that she had to wear around her torso to let her back heal.  (She also had a little stuffed animal turtle named Shelley to keep in class, and each child got to take it home for a weekend.)

I decided I'd make a welcome back/get well soon cake to give her on her first day back, and I thought it would be cute to make it in the shape of a little turtle.

I used one half of a ball pan to bake this cake in.  I trimmed a little off the cake on the side where the head was going to be.  This would make a little flat spot so I could make it look like the hole where the turtle's head would come out.  I crumb coated the cake, let it set, and iced it with green buttercream.

Since I knew the head was going to be pretty big I used foil to make the bulk of it.  After I got the shape that I wanted with the foil I covered it with green fondant.  I used the excess fondant to continue from the head and make the neck.  I set that aside to let it dry a bit.

I iced the flat spot where the head would be with dark green buttercream.  I used the same dark green to pipe the details onto the shell.  For the design on the top and the lines on the belly I used a round tip, and for the wide edge along the bottom of the shell I used a wide flat ribbon tip.

I attached the turtle head to the cake with a couple of toothpicks.  It was pretty top heavy and wanted to pull away, so I propped it up with a box of toothpicks for the time being.  I cut the signs from rolled out fondant, attached them to some cut bamboo skewers, painted the words on with blue food coloring, and set them aside to dry.  I cut the eyes for the turtle out of fondant and painted on the black pupils, nostrils, and mouth with food coloring.  I made the feet and tail out of fondant and slid them in place under the cake.  Then I put the signs in the foot and tail to make it look like the turtle was holding them.

The head still didn't want to stay right when I tried to take away the box, but I certainly couldn't give her the cake with a box of toothpicks on it.  :)  So I decided to make an apple out of fondant and put that in place of the toothpick box to prop up the head.  :)  It ended up being a good thing that the head was not cooperating because I really liked the way the apple looked as part of the cake.  I thought the color contrasted nicely with all the green.  Plus, you know, an apple for the teacher.  :)

Caleb's teacher was very excited about the cake!  I thought it turned out really cute, and we were happy to do something special for her and very happy that she liked it so much.  :)

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