The last year has been "The Year of the Owl" in our house. We really don't know how it all started. For whatever reason my youngest daughter became fascinated by owls. Her focused love has led her, and all of us, to learn as much about owls as she possibly can. I love her passion and decided to throw her an owl-themed birthday party for her birthday this past spring. Which meant we had to make an epic owl birthday cake, of course.
I thought I would take this week to share our owl birthday party ideas. With Halloween fast approaching, owl are a popular Halloween night bird. We kick things off with how to make a funny owl birthday cake.* for your convenience, this post contains affiliate links *
How to Make an Owl Birthday Cake
An owl party would not be complete without an owl cake. We took our inspiration from Handmade Charlotte for this one. My daughter wanted a multi-layered and multi-coloured cake. This cake was surprisingly easy to make.
You will need
box of white or vanilla cake mix - and the ingredients you need to make the cake according to the package instructions
buttercream icing - 2 cans of store-bought or 3 cups made from scratch
1 tablespoon cocoa
brown, orange, teal, violet and black gel food colouring
white fondant - about a 6-inch ball of fondant
3" cookie cutter and 1" cookie cutter (for eyes)
10" piping bag and leaf tip - I used Wilton #67 tip
First, follow the box instruction to make up the cake batter. Once made, divide the batter - we wanted to make a few mini-cupcakes and turn them into field mice...so we baked 10 mini-cupcakes first.
To make a multi-coloured cake, divide the remaining batter into thirds. Colour one-third teal, one-third violet and added 1 tablespoon of cocoa to the last third. Bake the cake layers in 8" round cake pans, for about 15 minutes at 350C. You could simply keep the cake all one colour - or make it whichever colour you like.
Once the cake layers have completely cooled, ice the cake with the buttercream icing. Feel free to use store-bought icing, or make your own batch. Use white icing between the cake layers. Colour the remaining icing with brown gel colouring and coat the outside of the cake with a thin layer of brown buttercream icing.
To make the feathers for the owl, use the leaf tip on a piping bag. Halfway through icing the owl, add a small amount of black colouring to the icing to create different colours for the feathers.
Once the entire cake top is covered with feathers make the tufts. This is where the fondant comes in. Colour a palm-sized ball of white fondant with brown gel icing colouring. Simply knead the colouring into the fondant. Once coloured, roll out the brown coloured fondant and shape it into triangles for the tufts. Secure the tufts in place with toothpicks and cover the tufts in icing feathers.
Next, the other fondant additions. To create the owl eyes start by rolling and cutting out white fondant to make the owl eyes...3" circles. Then make some black fondant and cut out 1" circles for the eye pupils. Mix up a small amount of orange fondant to make the owl beak. Place the eyes and beak on top of the owl's feathery face. Cut out 40 1" circles from the brown fondant and place them between the cake and the cake plate...creating a clean transition. Done.
To make the little field mice, turn the cooled mini cupcakes upside down and ice them with the same brown/black icing used for the owl feathers. To make the ears, cut 1" circles from the brown fondant and pinch them at one end. Secure the ears to the mouse head with more icing. The tails are a piece of thin black licorice and the noses are pink candy-coated chocolate.
My daughter loved her owl cake. Being a fan of the great horned owl, our cake was a pretty good match. I love how forgiving this cake was. Making the feathers isn't precise work like some cakes can require. At the end of the day, the cake was delicious and was fun and when it was done the kids could get back to singing and dancing at the party.
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