What's better than a custom graduation cake shaped like a bearded tree wearing a cap with oyster mushrooms..!?!? Answer- nothing.! Hah. Perfect Biology Major cake. This was a fun, creative cake to make! First, I baked a 9x13 red velvet cake, and then an 8 in square cake. To achieve the tree shape, I placed the cakes together and trimmed off edges from the larger cake, adding back the cake scraps to make up most of the leaf covered areas.
I frosted the tree trunk with chocolate icing tinted a variety of brown shades. Then, I used a leaf tip to pipe green leaves onto the top of the tree. I iced the hat in black, and used a yellow twizzler for the tassle. The beard I used a darker chocolate icing for, and free handed using a hair tip. The oyster mushrooms I fashioned ahead of time out of gumpaste tinted light brown with food gel. I rolled the gumpaste out flat, and then cut out circles using a container lid. I cut those circles in half, and shaped natural curves around the edges of the mushrooms, even scratching gills into the undersides of the mushrooms. I let the gumpaste mushrooms dry on a curved plastic piece. Once they were dry, I dusted the gills with cocoa powder and placed them onto the tree cake.
