How to make a fondant cow

Similarly to the post I did a while back on how to make a fondant sheep,  I'm going to show you how to make a fondant cow. You may have seen the cow already as it was sitting on top of my boyfriend's birthday cake back in April!

As I said in the sheep post, all animals can be made from three basic shapes - the cone, the ball and the sausage.

To begin making the cow, make a large ball of white fondant and roll it between the palms of your hands so that one end becomes narrower and it forms a cone shape.

Make two sausages and cut to equal lengths and use to form the legs. Here, I placed the legs crossing over. You'll need to flatten them slightly under the body.

 A few steps in one in this next photo. Make another cone and use as the head; make a smaller cone from pink fondant and stick on the end as the nose. Make two arms from smaller sausage shapes.

Use some more pink fondant to make the hooves, and use the flat side of a cocktail stick to make an indentation in each one.

Roll out some small, thin sausage shapes from yellow fondant. Take two of them and pinch the ends to make a point, and curve them in slightly. Stick on top of the cow's head with a dab of water to make the horns. Take three straight sausage shapes and place along the top to make hair.

Make two small balls of pink fondant, flatten them slightly then press into them - with either a round modelling tool or perhaps the end of a ballpoint pen - to make ears. Make similar indentations in the nose for nostrils (not sure why this photo is sideways, sorry!)

Finally make a tail from a long thin sausage of black fondant, and use a small craft knife to cut into the end to give a fringed effect. 

Roll tiny balls of black fondant and squash them with your finger, then stick on with a dab of water in a haphazard fashion all over the cow's body.

And there you have it! You can easily make a cow sitting or even standing in a different position, and you could use the same basic elements of the body shape to make several other kinds of animal.