Dr. Seuss Cat in the Hat and Thing 1 Cake with Tutorial

This is one of our favorite cakes to make. It was fun making this cake, which is inspired by Dr. Seuss' Cat in the Hat and Thing 1, Thing 2. Since the birthday celebrant is turning one, we (with our client's permission) used only Thing 1 as the topper. We took hints from JMC Cakes' version, but placed our Thing 1 on top and the fish at bottom (sans the glass bowl).

We first made the Thing 1 figure,s tarting with the torso and legs in one piece molded from strawberry flavored marshmallow fondant (MMF) tinted in red. Then, we made the two arms and let them dry overnight. Since we live in an area that experiences temperatures in the high 80s almost daily during summer that shoot up even to high 90s or in the 100s, we used a small tabletop fan to aid in the drying process. Adding a couple of pinches of Tylose powder while kneading the MMF also helps in speeding up the drying process making it behave like a gum paste. On the second day, we attached the two arms using a dab of tylose glue on each side of the shoulder. Then we inserted a toothpick dipped in tylose glue to hold the future head.



Thing 1 torso.
Shaping Thing 1 face took a few minutes, perhaps close to 10 minutes, to get it right. A flower former helps in eliminating too much hand holding and finger marks.
On the 4th day, we were able to paint the eyes, nose and lip of Thing 1 and added the blue hair. We created the hair using small strips of fondant that we cut using an Xacto knife. We tried using an extruder, but it was not working well for us. So, we decided to create several small strips of blue fondant that we rolled, curled and applied by hand. We used tylose glue to attach each strand. Then, when the paint had dried up, we connected the head to the body using the toothpick.
We used 3 layers of 9-inch round cakes (cookies and cream flavor). After crumbcoating, we covered the cake with sky blue MMF. We continued the application all the way to the side of the board. This will be our base, which will have the flying kite scene along with the ball, book and fishbowl.

We created the cloud effect by cutting out uneven round shape to mimic the cloud using white MMF. Then, we applied water with a brush on top of the blue fondant before adding the white MMF cloud on top.

For the Cat in the Hat's cat, we covered with red strawberry flavored MMF a 4-layer 6-inch round cake (cookies and cream flavor).



Then, we added straws cut out to the height of the bottom tier to add support. We then connected the two tiers with a wooden dowel for stability.



We cut out a couple of 1.5-inch wide white MMF to create the stripes on the hat. We attached them with tylose glue.

Using an edible black marker, we added lines on the white stripes. Then, we rolled black fondant in long strip and attached it to the cloud and sky in irregular pattern to simulate a flying kite movement. This will act as the rope/thread that will hold the kite. We cut out small circles in pairs to apply on the rope/thread.


We did not attach all decorations prior to delivery to prevent risks of damaging them. We added the ball, open book with a birthday message written in a Dr. Seuss fashion and also the fish in a fishbowl at the client's kitchen. The finished product turned out great. The client, her friends, family and the birthday girl all loved it!