Garden Cake

 I wanted to make a special cake to celebrate my Grandpa's 84th birthday, and so I decided to pick a subject close to his heart and make an edible vegetable garden. I've been so blessed and lucky to have such a wonderful Grandpa for so long. Amongst other things, he's a good ol' country boy at heart and an avid farmer. I've been lucky enough to directly learn and see the value in such hard work and care, and to reap the benefits of delicious produce.! I started off by baking a large chocolate cake (in a 12x12 in pan). I marked the rectangular garden portion of the cake, iced it with homemade vanilla buttercream, and then covered it with oreo crumbs and cocoa powder to create a realistic "dirt" base. Then I used a large three point star tip to cover the rest of the cake with green tinted icing.

  

I made the sunflowers ahead of time out of a variety of yellow and orange shades of gumpaste. I cut them out using two different daisy cutters, and poked a piece of green wire into each flower before it dried to serve as the stem. The black texturized gumpaste centers were attached using a bit of water, and I used curved drying racks so each flower turned out more cupped and realistic. I brushed on some edible yellow shimmer dust to the flowers when they were completely dry. The flower heads proved to be to heavy to be supported by only their wire stems, so I ended up attaching a toothpick to each, which I wrapped with green florist tape. voila.!

The cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, and crookneck squash I made ahead of time too out of colored gumpaste. I colored toasted coconut with yellow food gel to make the straw chicken nests. The eggs are gumpaste covered in cocoa powder. The hen is gumpaste as well. I piped '84' in the corner to finish the cake off.

 

We had a nice outdoor crab bash in my Grandpa's barn to celebrate his birthday with friends and family. Here I am holding my baby nephew with my Grandpa and his cake. He liked it a lot- he's containing all his excitement in the picture. :p