I can not believe how long it has taken me to share all these pictures of the sweet woodlands party cake. I made it almost a year ago for my niece's 10th birthday. It is approx 6" by 6" high.
At the time I was playing around with some freeze dried fruit powder and I painted the cake with a mix of powdered raspberry mixed with rose spirits, lemon powder and some gel food colours.
I love the textured look that I achieved by rubbing in extra powder after hand brushing the cake.
I decided to apply the colour in quite a rough organic way, see below for example, and then my design was guided a little by the underlying colours, like a natural landscape.
The design centered on the mason jar party light idea I had so I started by drawing on my string with an edible pen (AmeriColor 2 Pack Gourmet Food Writer Set, Black Marker
) then I cut out pink and blue fondant by hand and a little grey for the lids and drew on a little line at the corner and popped the jars on the cake. Later on I used a little royal icing to pipe a little line of white on the side to look like reflected light.I rolled out some chocolate flavored fondant to make the poles and shaped the birdies. Then I used some cloud cutters to make the white clouds, mine are from Cakes by Bien (see below for details). To get them looking fluffy I rolled out the white fondant quite thick and then popped some plastic food wrap over the top then pressed the cutter down, see in the picture how it makes the edges look a bit rounded instead of being sharp and defined.
The cloud cutters were quite handy as I also used them for the trees and bushes.
I also hand cut the deer (as someone else was using my little Cakes by Bien Deer Aimee cutter which would have been perfect).
Okay instead of explaining every step I pretty much I hand cut everything without a template except the flowers and cloud cutters. Any of the white detail is piped royal icing (except the clouds and flowers) and the black is edible pen.
Tip. when applying the flowers, cut them out, keeping them in the plunger cutter, apply a little water or edible glue on the spot you want them and then push them out onto the cake using the plunger center to gently adhere them to the cake.
Inside the cake was strawberry cake with vanilla Italian Meringue Buttercream.
I prefer Americolor food writer pens. I used Bakels chocolate and white fondant and Satin Ice red fondant and Queens premix royal icing.
Cloud cutters - used for clouds, trees and bushes - Cakes by Bien
Linda Vandermeer is a blogger, baker, maker and author of the cookbook ' Sweets on a Stick': More than 150 kid friendly recipes for cakes, candies, cookies and pies on the go!. Published in the US the book is available at most online book stores.
Affiliate links may earn me money and contribute to supporting this blog.
Original Ideas, photography and recipes by Linda Vandermeer do not reuse without permission.
