Mouse House
Create an adorable Autumn cake with two whimsical mice living in a pumpkin house. This Mouse House cake is one of my favorites. Fabulous for Fall, and cute as a button, this cake will capture the imaginations of young and old alike.
The cake design is from Debbie Brown’s 50 Easy Party Cakes, a book that I absolutely love! This book can be found on our site, and I highly recommend it because it has tons of inspiration and provides instruction on making simple but striking cakes.
I chose to make a pumpkin flavored cake with cream cheese frosting to go with the Autumn theme. This cake is made with two half spheres. You can make this shape cake with a ball pan or if you have a bowl that is oven safe and fairly round, you can bake two halves to make the pumpkin.
One of the nice things about this cake is that the mice figures can be sculpted far in advance. I suggest making them at least 2 days ahead of time so that they have plenty of time to dry. You want them to be pretty sturdy by the time you place them on the cake, so that they are easier to work with and don’t break. To prevent sticking, set your figures on a silpat (non-stick baking mat) or parchment paper to dry.
If you are intimidated by sculpting fondant figures, this is a good cake to start with. The mice are fairly simple, and you can make the figures far in advance which will give you time to practice. A fondant sculpting set will help you with the small details, and this product can be found in our store www.cakecupboard.com.
Covering the pumpkin shaped cake in fondant is easier when the cake is placed atop a tall cake pedestal. This enables you to see the sides and bottom. If you don’t have a cake pedestal, you could also rest the cake on a round jar lid that is smaller than the base of the cake. This will allow you to work the fondant all the way under the cake so that you won’t see any seams or bunching at the bottom. Once covered in orange fondant, I transfer the cake to a green fondant covered cake board. If you lift the cake from the bottom, you will minimize fingerprints in the fondant, since this bottom portion will be covered when set on the cake board.
To make the windows that the mice peek out of, I used the round end of a large decorating tip/tube. You could also use a small round cutter if you have one.
I attached everything except for the mice to this cake with a tiny bit of water. For the mice, I used royal icing to make sure that they would stay in place.
The curly mice tails and pumpkin stems add interest and detail to this cake.
