Puppy In a Box Cake For Birthday

I made this puppy in a box cake for a lady who loves her dog to bits. The cake was ordered by her daughter and she specifically requested for a dog to be incorporated into the cake design, hence I came up with this puppy in a box design.

A square cake decorated like a gift box with its lid on the side a puppy topper at the corner of the box.

A cute Puppy in a Box cake for a customer

The cake was pretty straightforward to decorate, I had the box cover that is leaning against the cake made in Styrofoam and covered in fondant. That saved me the trouble of having to structure and support had the cover been made of cake. And the puppy head was made of fondant that has been added CMC. The lollipop was hand made with fondant and the pink roses on the cake were store-bought.

How to Decorate the Puppy in a Box Cake:

Main supplies for the puppy cake:

Cake – I baked a 7 inches square cake. The cake itself is approximately 4 inches in height and I used my butter pound cake recipe.
Buttercream – As in almost all my cakes, I used buttercream to fill the cake as well as to crumb coat it.
Fondant – I used this to cover the cake as well as to decorate it. Satin Ice was my choice. All the deco pieces on the cake including the puppy head and the lollipop were in fondant. I added CMC powder to this to allow it to hold shape better. I also used CMC added white fondant to make the ‘tissue’ paper in the box.
Gumpaste roses – I used a total of 5 small gum paste roses. These were store-bought.
Extruder tool – I used the extruder tool to make the rope border for the cake.
Plaque cutter – I used the plaque cutter to put the birthday message on the cake board
Alphabet cutters – I used Tappit cutters for the alphabets on the cake. I cut them out of gum paste.
Styrofoam dummy – I used a flat square Styrofoam piece of the same size as the cake. This piece made the lid for the box cake.
Round plunger cutter– These were to make the polka dots on the box lid.

A small dog topper on a square birthday cake

A cute puppy topper for a Puppy In a Box cake

Decorating and assembling the cake:

As usual, all deco elements that could be made ahead of time were prepared in advance. These included the puppy head and his birthday hat, the lollipop and the box lid.
Next was the cake. I baked it in 2 separate tins. Once baked and completely cooled, I layered and sandwiched them with buttercream. And then I crumb coated the cake before covering it with fondant. I did not cover the entire cake like how I typically do for all cakes. Instead, I only covered the sides with white and attached the vertical strips of purple, pink, and brown all around the cake. After that, I attached a rolled border on the top edges of the cake. For the bottom border, I used my extruder tool to pipe out a rope border in purple and attached it to the cake with shortening.
Next to go on the cake were the tissues on top of the cake. To make these tissues, I rolled my white fondant really thin and cut it into random square and rectangle pieces. After that, I placed them slightly crumpled all over the top of the cake. I also made sure the top is all covered.
Then, on one corner, I attached the lollipop with at the other corner, the puppy with the party hat went on.
I completed the rest of the deco (the gum paste roses and name plaque) before placing the box lid on the side of the puppy cake. To make the lid does not move, I attached it to the cake and the cake board with fondant glue.