Instructions

1. Trace or draw an owl shape taken from online images, nature books or magazines onto paper to use as a model for cutting your sheet cake. Include a small round shape for the owl's head, two pointed ears, a large oval for the owl's body and a small rectangle underneath the body for the bird's feet. Design leaf-shaped pieces for the owl's wings on either side of the body.

2. Lay the paper model for the owl on a sheet cake and etch the design into the cake with the tip of a knife. Do the same for wings on a separate round cake, which you will attach with icing to the body. The etching technique also works if you just plan to frost the owl onto the top of an intact sheet cake.

3. Cut the owl's body and the wings from the cakes using a serrated knife. Cut with a sawing motion instead of pressing down on the cake.

4. Create dark and light shades of frosting with the color scheme you've determined. Dark chocolate brown, light chocolate brown and white frosting make a traditional owl.

5. Attach the wing-shaped pieces to the cake body with icing in the same color as you will use for the main body of the owl. Place the wing shapes near the top of the owl's body with some space between the wings and the main body to give the shapes in a distinct-wing shape.

6. Frost the entire owl with the darker shade of icing. Create body feathers by arranging milk chocolate disks in an overlapping pattern over the owl's stomach. The disks don't need to be staggered, but each row should curve slightly upward to the center of the owl's chest to mimic the growth of real feathers.

7. Create the owl's eyes by either frosting two white orbs and placing chocolate disks in the center of each or by pressing open chocolate cream cookies with the white icing facing outward onto the frosting and placing a chocolate disk in the center of each. Fashion a beak from yellow or beige marzipan and place it between the eyes. The beak should resemble a nose, but with a sharp point at the end.

8. Decorate the wings with chocolate curls made from shaving a block of chocolate with a vegetable peeler. The shavings should naturally curl slightly when you pull the peel over the chocolate. If the chocolate breaks instead of curling, the pieces will still look like feathers when you sprinkle the roughly cut chocolate over the wings. For sparkling wing feathers, sprinkle the wings with white sugar crystals.

9. Mold two feet, with three toes each, from the marzipan, and place them on the rectangle at the base of the owl. The feet consist of leaf-shaped toes, or claws, connected at their tops in a flattened bit of marzipan that you attach to the owl's body with icing.