Fondant Tortoise Tutorial

It's been really long since I posted a tutorial here, so here goes. This is a tutorial for a super cute tortoise or tortie as I call him. I made this ages ago and clicked pictures to share with you'll but it got buried under a huge pile of pics. Found them today and like I keep saying, it's better late than never right? :) I am no fondant expert, I rarely use it, but I like experimenting here and there. Tortie was one of my experiments and I loved him so much I wanted to share the joy of making him with you'll. Hopefully, you'll will make him with ease and love him too.

This is a very basic and simple tortoise as you can see, it barely requires any instructions. I have skipped a few steps which I thought were very simple and I hope instructions suffice there.

One, Two, Three, make a tortie for me

Tortie tutorial:

• Step 1 - Colour your fondant in the shade you want the tortoise shell to be. I used a light shade of blue. Knead till the colour is fully incorporated, roll out and cut a circle. Keep the rest in a zip lock bag for later use. Colour another batch of fondant green for the tortoise limbs. Also leave a tiny amount uncoloured and another tinier amount coloured black. Store them in a zip lock bag as well. I used a cookie cutter to cut the circle. Choose a circle cutter according to the size you want the tortoise topper to be. Use a quilting tool to imprint lines on the tortoise shell. If you don't have the quilting tool, use a toothpick and dot your design for the tortoise shell on the fondant. I have used a toothpick many times and apart from being time consuming, it's no different when it comes to the outcome of the design. Take a piping tip and use the round end to cut off a semi circle off one side of the tortoise back. You can also use a small circle cutter for the same.
•  Step 2 - Place the cut, imprinted fondant circle on your palm and mould it to form a bit of a dome. After that, on top of anything that has a dome so that it dries out in a mound shape. You need to leave it out for a day to dry out and hold its shape. You get fancy tools for this, like spherical foam balls. If you have one, go ahead and make your life easier. I would suggest an orange if you have one handy. It's a cheaper alternative. I didn't have one around, so I substituted as you can see.
• Step 3 - Use the remaining green coloured fondant to shape 5 balls, one for the head and four smaller ones for the arms and legs. Indent the limbs with the back end of a toothpick to resemble claws or if you are lazy like me,  just basic dots will do. Place them on your work surface and attach the dried shell on top of them, using a dab of water or edible glue. Adjust the placement of the limbs accordingly. Now, take a minuscule amount of white fondant, roll it into two tiny balls for the eyes, attach with a smear of water. Take two tiny dots of black fondant and paste on top of the white balls to make eye balls. You can also use an edible black marker to dot the eye balls, it works out much easier than having to colour such a tiny amount of fondant black for the eye balls. Use a toothpick to form the smile and there you have it, a cute lil fondant tortoise topper.

P.S - Knead a bit of tylose powder into your fondant if you need, it helps the fondant hold it's shape better and dry up into that curved shell shape that you need.

Now go ahead and Get, Set, Bake.. A cute cake maybe to use this adorable topper on....