Hippo Cake

So, here are the details for Lucas's hippo cake. It was supposed to look like the hippo from Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?
I wanted to copy the idea from this other cake, where the lady made a giraffe out of royal icing. Instead of real royal icing (with egg whites), I used another recipe just using powdered sugar, corn syrup, and milk. It was way easy and tastes good, too.
I put a picture of the hippo on a cookie sheet with wax paper over that so I could trace the hippo. It worked out really well. I liked this idea because I knew I could make as many hippos as I needed instead of just one if I did it right on the cake.
My first hippo was too big, but looked pretty good. I originally considered him a practice hippo. When I decided to make a round cake instead of a 9x13 cake, I knew I had to try again. My second hippo was even better, but this was the day before the party, so I knew I was risking it not drying enough. FYI - to get the colors looking so varied, I actually mixed blue food coloring with some almond extract (mostly alcohol) and "painted" chunks of blue with my fingers.

I went on my merry little way and made my marshmallow fondant and my coconut cake. When I finally decided to transfer the hippo, it broke and broke and broke. Finally I decided to keep it on the wax paper and tear the paper around the edges. This worked, but I still had to basically do the hippo all over on top of the cute hippo. Luckily I had saved all my icing from the night before.
It didn't turn out as cute as the other hippos, but it still looked good.
I added color to some of my white fondant and made a little fondant braid to go around the bottom of the cake. It looked really cute and I was pleased.
Most importantly, Lucas loved the cake. Friday afternoon I had to keep him from trying to play with the cake or stick a spoon in it. He actually got a spoon out of the drawer and brought it over - hence the dent in the fondant.
Here are some pictures of the process:

First rolling out the fondant.

Then draping the fondant over the cake and trimming it around the edges.

And finally the finished product vs. the original: