In celebration of Cinco de Mayo, I thought it would be fitting to make a piñata cake. Mostly I just wanted to see if I could. I hadn't yet made a cake that required major structural support and thought this would be a nice way to ease into it.

My little burro had to have something to hold up his midsection or he would collapse under his own weight. I started by cutting a dowel into even sections for his legs. I then cut a basic body shape out of two pieces of cardboard. One to attach the feet to and one to place the body on which would be put together later. I thought it would be easier to work with this way without worrying that the legs would crumple while I was carving the body and head.

I notched out some small holes for the legs and then glued them in for stability. I cut the body out of a 8" round cake using the base piece as a guide. Next, I cut a cake baked in a loaf pan in half and began carving the shape of the head and nose. For the ears, I decided it would be easier to carve it out of one piece with a sloping base that served as the forehead instead of trying to attach (and stabilize) two separate ears. This worked out really well and once there was a thin layer of icing between the sections, it was surprisingly steady without any extra support.

The legs were more challenging than I had expected. The diameter of the dowels was not that much smaller than the cake legs so as I was inserting them, the cake wanted to split open. I ended up cutting a small hole through the center of each leg, much like coring an apple, so they could fit inside. Also, I didn't have any cake left that that was as tall as the dowels so it needed some filler for height. Oops. But once it was all together, I was happy to note that he was already looking like a little burro.

Out of fear of disintegration, I put the base coat of icing on with the flat side of Wilton tip 47 instead of using a spreader. The horizontal striping also helped me figure out where the lines of color needed to be. Since I wanted him to look as much like a basic burro piñata as possible, I mixed all the colors necessary and loosely marked where each section would be. Then I went to work with the ridged side of that same #47 tip and pulled short strokes of icing straight out from his body in each color until he was covered. I cut out two small ovals of white fondant for the eyes then piped the pupils and nostrils in black with tip #4. For the finishing touch, I gathered together some short sections of yellow yarn and used a toothpick to secure it as a tail. Yes, that meant the tail wasn't edible but who really wants to eat donkey tail anyway?

So that's my little burro piñata for Cinco de Mayo. Just don't get too drunk on margaritas and try to whack it with a stick.