Barn with Piggies Cake

 My wonderful Grandpa just turned 86! He has been a hardworking farmer his entire life. Now that he's not physically able to complete the farm tasks that he's always loved, he enjoys watching the family complete any new farming schemes he decides upon. If you couldn't already guess this year's project, we added four cute little pigs to the family.

 

Here are the sweet piggies peeking out of their pigpen! Travis is the one to the left. The other three are tentatively referred to (and not really referred to because for some reason Travis is the star) as Porkchop, Egg & Cheese Biscuit, and Baconator (one is not pictured).

 I made the piggies out of gumpaste (an edible clay like substance that hardens as it dries) tinted with pink food gel a few days before the party. I used foodsafe black marker to draw on faces and splotches for each pig. I baked and cooled two 9x13 cakes that I iced with green tinted buttercream icing. First I used a decorating tip (#233) commonly used for grass to create small 3-D grassy patches, and then squeezed and dragged additional icing around the top of the cake using that same decorating tip. To make the barn, I made a small batch of Royal Icing (*It is very important to use royal icing- it acts as a very strong glue and hardens enough to connect the separate pieces of graham cracker. It's not the tastiest icing, you certainly wouldn't ice a cake using it, but it's a handy technique for decorations). I iced the sides of the barn red and let them completely dry. Cover Royal Icing not being used immediately carefully and completely with plastic wrap so that it doesn't crust and harden. Then, I piped a generous amount of white royal icing to "glue" the sides of the graham cracker barn together and let them dry completely. Right before presenting the finished cake, I put Travis on top of the barn and accented the pigs with mud puddles (hot fudge dusted with cocoa powder).

 This is Grandpa's Barn- clearly my graham cracker representation is dead on accurate.

 My sweet nephew was thrilled to see Travis the pig on the roof of the barn! "Muddy" (hot fudge) pig hoof-prints make up the 86 that Travis traced on the roof.