Fluffy Puppy Cake Tutorial
In this video tutorial, I'll show you how to make a CUTE buttercream puppy cake! This cake would be so cute for young birthdays or for the dog lovers in your life.
You can easily change up the dog fur or dog features to match all sorts of dog breeds!
We're keeping things nice and simple in this tutorial. This sweet puppy is made from a few lightly carved cake layers. As an added bonus, this cake shape would work well for a number of animal cake designs.
*With simple changes to the ears and fur, this puppy cake could work for a number of dog breeds!
Table of Contents
How to Make a Puppy Cake
You can find the free puppy cake tutorial along with the full, printable instructions further down in this post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps in making this sweet buttercream puppy cake!
Our dog cake consists of two 6 inch cake layers, and a half ball cake.
- Spread a 6 inch cake layer with buttercream, and stack half ball cake on top of it. This is the body of the dog. (Trim it down a bit if needed) so that it isn't so tall. This will be the back half of the dog.
- Next, using the remaining 6 inch cake layer, use the head template to cut out your shape (as close to the edge of the cake layer as possible). This gives you the head shape as well as the front legs. Stack on top of each other.
- Carve a little notch out of the top front of the head to form the nose. Trim and shape as needed.
- Crumb coat the dog cake with a thin layer of buttercream.
- Trim down the cake board to the size of the dog cake and transfer to cake base.
- Now the fun part! Cover the cake with buttercream fur. Add black fondant eyes, nose, and fondant ears and tail anchored by lollipop stick.
- The ball is a rice cereal treat coated with vegetable shortening and covered with a layer of blue fondant.
This is just about the easiest 3-D dog cake that you can make! We had so much fun with this cake. Don't miss our video tutorial below which goes into much more detail! We hope that you enjoy the video.
If you give our fluffy buttercream puppy cake a try, we would love for you to leave a comment below!
Another Puppy Cake Idea
Looking for an even easier puppy cake? We have a cute Puppy Cake tutorial that comes together in no time.
This sweet cake has been a favorite on our blog for years. You can find the step by step photo tutorial here!: Easy Puppy Cake Tutorial
Cake Recipes
There are many cake recipes that would be great for this puppy cake! Just a few examples are our Chocolate Cake from Scratch, Vanilla Velvet Cake, Almond Cream Cake, Strawberry Cake, and more!
More Animal Cakes
We have more animal birthday cakes to share with you! Here are just a few that would be perfect for all sorts of occasions. Some of our most popular are the Snake Cake (eek!), Farm Cake, and Jungle Theme Cake!
Enjoy the Tutorial!
Thanks so much for stopping by! We hope that you will give this sweet puppy cake a try. If you do, make sure to leave a comment and photo below!
For more super cute Kids cake ideas, don't miss our roundup of 100+ Birthday Cakes!
This collection includes favorite cake recipes as well as tons of creative cake decorating designs. Have fun scrolling through!
Have you made this? We would LOVE for you to leave a ⭐️ rating as well as a comment and photo below! We really appreciate your feedback!
Fluffy Puppy Cake
Equipment
Ingredients
- For this cake we used a half of a sports ball cake 6 inch diameter and two 6 inch rounds. We used the doctored cake mix White Almond Sour Cream Cake recipe for this project (1 recipe, 7 cups batter), but our scratch version would work well too. Choose a recipe that isn’t overly soft so that it will hold up well to light carving.
- Template for Dog’s Head See Notes
- Vanilla Buttercream we used our Fluffy Vanilla Buttercream recipe
- Black Fondant for eyes and nose
- White Fondant for ears I kneaded in a bit of tylose
- Pink Petal Dust – Optional. For the inside of ears
- 10 ×14 cake cardboards- We used three. Two for the base and one cut to the size of the cake.
- Piping Tips: Grass Tip 233 for fur Tip 3 (white dots on eyes)
- Miscellaneous Disposable piping bags scissors or xacto for trimming cake board, small paintbrush for pink petal dust, your cake base of choice (we wrapped two sheet cake boards in a green plastic tablecloth stretched around the boards and stapled beneath.)
- We were able to slice the dog into 16 slices– I would say 14-16 serving is a good estimate.
- Looking for something even simpler? We have a cute Puppy Cake tutorial that comes together in no time. This has been a popular free blog tutorial of ours for years. You can find it here!: Easy Puppy Cake Tutorial
Instructions
- Spread a 6 inch cake layer with buttercream, and stack half ball cake on top of it. This is the body of the dog. (Trim it down a bit if needed) so that it isn't so tall. This is the back half of the dog.
- Arrange the template for the head on top of the remaining 6 inch cake layer. Then stack it in a way that the head is resting on what's left of the 6 inch cake layer it was carved from. This makes up the dog's head and front legs. Trim and shape the arms as needed.
- Carve a little notch out of the top front of the head to form the nose. Trim and shape as needed. Trim away back/sides of the dog as needed now that the cake is taking shape so that the proportions look right.
- Crumb coat the dog cake with a thin layer of buttercream. If the cake is completely thawed, you may find it easier to pipe the buttercream onto the carved areas and then spread with a spatula.
- Trim down the cake board that the cake is resting on to fit the size of the cake, using an xacto knife. Transfer the crumb-coated dog cake to the cake base (two stacked cardboard sheet cake boards wrapped with a plastic tablecloth and secured with staples on the other side.)
- Pipe buttercream fur using a grass piping tip. Use small black balls of fondant, flattened, for eyes. For the nose, we used black fondant with a slight heart/triangular shape. Continue to pipe buttercream fur around these features. (The fur was piped a bit shorter around eyes)
- Small scraps of cake were used for back feet. Cover with piping.
- I made fondant triangle ears. We dusted with pink petal dust in the center. Press into buttercream-frosted head.
- Dog's tail is fondant wrapped around a lollipop stick and stick is inserted directly into the cake. Pipe short buttercream fur on tail.
- The ball is a rice cereal treat (pre-made), rolled into a round shape, covered with a thin coat of vegetable shortening and wrapped with blue fondant. Trim away the excess and place in front of dog.
Video
Notes
Loved This Recipe?!
Thanks for the feedback!
Awww it is Perfect!! You did such a great job! xo
I made the doggy cake again. I really love this design
How did you get that shade of brown? Is that a caramel brown?
Hi Nelka, This is just over-the-top-cute!! I love it!! The cupcake in front of puppy is a nice touch.
Thanks Bebe ?
I need to make a larger fluffy puppy cake. Would an 8 inch ball cake pan work with 2 8 inch round cake pans? I could try cutting out a larger head. Has anyone else tried this?
Hi Kathy! You may have missed my answer to you in our Forums section from several days ago and so I'm going to post it below!
I'm glad that you are making this! I haven't made a larger puppy before, but I'm sure that you could.
If you can't find an 8 inch ball/hemisphere pan in time, you could layer an additional 8 inch cake layer onto the first 8 inch and then another 6 inch cake layer (or 8 inch) on top of that. By adding those two additional cake layers, you'll have plenty of cake to carve down into the rounded shape if you don't have a ball pan. And then the additional layer would be needed to create the head and arms.
**Another alternative would be to make the original size puppy cake and supplement with puppy cupcakes but making the larger cake would probably save time! ;0) Good luck!
Thanks so much for the tip Melissa! I have not gotten around to making a color palette. Do you have any suggestions on how I can mix colors for a caramel brown? Been looking around for food gels with that color and no luck. Guess I'll have to mix a few colors and see what I come up with!
Kathy
Hi Kathy! For the teddy bear cake that I recently did, I used Americolor Ivory to tint the fondant a shade of brown and then added a touch of chocolate brown coloring gel. This may be close to what you're going for-- (I didn't tint it on camera but you can see what they look like here)
https://www.mycakeschool.com/video-tutorials/teddy-bear-gift-box-cake/
Also, for my sailing teddy bears cake, I used just Americolor Ivory for these bears ;0) I'm sure that Wilton would work also!
https://www.mycakeschool.com/video-tutorials/sailboat-and-teddy-bears-cake/
When experimenting with coloring your buttercream, just test a very small amount of buttercream first to make sure you're happy and then do a similar proportion of color(s) for the larger batch. Hope this helps!
Hi Melissa. Just wondering if you would switch over to a 100% shortening buttercream rather than your half and half fluffy buttercream recommended for this cake if the puppy cake's size was increased with 8 inch round and ball cake pans. Since a larger cake would take a lot longer to pipe I thought a 100% shortening buttercream might hold up better. My question is would it compromise the fluffy look of the puppy's hair? I'm always thankful for your replies!
Hi Kathy! There's no need to switch, the half and half will be just fine. Even our classic (all butter no shortening) recipe would work and hold up nicely to the piping although it isn't quite as light in color as the fluffy buttercream.
I don't use the 100% shortening frosting recipe very often- it's helpful for making the frosting a bit more heat resistant in the summer months for outdoor parties, etc. If you ever do use this frosting, it holds it's shape nicely as well. Good luck!
Thanks for all your helpful comments Melissa! You’re the best!
Absolutely adorable! I made this for my dogs 5th birthday and everyone loves it. Thank you for such detailed info! The video was perfect and helped a ton
Thanks so much for your feedback, Kirstyn! Your cake is SO cute! Great job ;0)
Your tutorial which is wonderful. I followed your instructions and learned a lot. Thank you!!! (My granddaughter wanted a pink dog cake.)
Oh my goodness, this is too cute! Love your pink version! Thanks so much for sharing it, I know your granddaughter must have been thrilled! ;0)
I Loved this tutorial!! It was so helpful having the video too. I used your WASC doctored cake recipe with the fluffy buttercream. I wanted a cute puppy cake for my niece’s puppy themed birthday party and this was such a great template. I only changed the ears to match her puppy. I’m so happy I found your page and recipes!
Yay! It is perfect! You did such a great job, thanks for sharing your photos! ;0)