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Home › Recipes › Course Preview

Updated on December 7, 2021 by Liz Marek · This post may contain affiliate links ·

Pug Cake Tutorial

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Cake sculpted to look like a realistic Pug dog cake

Skill level: Advanced

Guest instructor Natalie Sideserf from Sideserf Cakes joins us today for this awesome, super realistic Pug cake.

Learn how to pose, sketch and plan out this lovable pug dog cake design. Natalie offers several tips and tricks that she uses when creating dog cakes like this one.

Natalie breaks down how to sculpt the face, the ears and facial features, how to sculpt the legs and tail and how to texture and paint lifelike colors onto the pug to make it look just like the real thing.

There's a lot to cover in today's tutorial, so let's get our tools together and let's get started!

2:25:28 Minutes of Instruction

What You Will Learn

  • How to sculpt a realistic Pug dog cake
  • Learn how to plan out and design the cake structure
  • Natalie's tips and tricks to get realistic texture and details
  • How to sculpt the facial features, paws, toes, tail and more

Tutorial Chapters

  1. Sketching the body 0:38
  2. Planning out the structure 4:27
  3. Cutting threaded rod and boards 6:18
  4. Building the structure 10:47
  5. Adding structure to the board 15:34
  6. Covering in foil tape 20:18
  7. Building up the belly 23:44
  8. Stacking the cakes 31:06
  9. Carving the cakes 33:36
  10. Covering in buttercream 38:05
  11. Sketching the face 40:45
  12. Covering in modeling chocolate 42:34
  13. Blending the seams 46:03
  14. Sculpting the face 50:06
  15. Adding the eyes 1:10:07
  16. Making the jawline 1:18:15
  17. Making face wrinkles 1:23:50
  18. Making the ears 1:26:57
  19. Making head wrinkles 1:30:32
  20. Making the right arm 1:32:17
  21. Making the toes 1:37:02
  22. Making the left arm 1:39:29
  23. Making the back legs 1:42:48
  24. Making the tail 1:52:22
  25. Adding hair and texture 1:53:39
  26. Painting the eyes 1:57:54
  27. Painting the face 2:03:47
  28. Painting the body 2:16:22
  29. Making the carpet board 2:17:54

Downloads

Materials List

Pug Reference 01

Pug Reference 02

Pug Reference 03

Pug Sketch 01

Pug Sketch 02

Pug Cake Board Template

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    Candy Crush Bust Cake Tutorial
  • Cake decorated to look like a 3D jelly flower cake with astronaut topper
    Astronaut Gelatin Flower Cake Tutorial

About Liz Marek

Liz Marek is a professional cake artist and recipe developer who has been teaching baking and cake decorating since 2008. She founded Artisan Cake Company in Portland, Oregon in 2009 and now runs Sugar Geek Show, where she publishes kitchen-tested recipes, food science explanations, and step-by-step tutorials.

Liz is best known for sculpted and hyperrealistic cakes. She won Netflix's Is It Cake? Holiday 2 in 2025 with a hyperrealistic Santa cake, and has competed on and won Food Network cake competitions. Cake Masters Magazine named her one of the top 10 cake artists in 2017. She is the author of Artisan Cake Company's Visual Guide to Cake Decorating and a graduate of the Oregon Culinary Institute.

Her focus is on explaining not just how a recipe works but why it works, so bakers can troubleshoot instead of guess. Every recipe on this site is tested before it's published.

Liz teaches full-length cake tutorials, including sculpted and hyperrealistic cakes, at Sugar Geek University.

Primary Sidebar

Hi, I'm Liz! I'm a cake artist and recipe developer, and I won Netflix's Is It Cake? Holiday 2 with a hyperrealistic Santa. I write foolproof recipes that explain why things work, not just how.

I also teach full-length cake tutorials, including sculpted cakes, at Sugar Geek University.

More about me →

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