For The Birds

I was able to kill two birds with one stone with this project (pardon the pun!). I needed to test out my cake construction skills by making and stacking a three tiered cake and I also wanted to participate in this cake contest. This is the end result!
I bake a butter pecan cake using cake mix, which I don’t normally do (I’m a cake purest at heart) but because it was a tester cake, I wanted to go with something relatively simple to make and something that wouldn’t break the bank. I baked two 12 inch, 10 inch and 8 inch cakes. I actually ended up baking one too many 10 inch cakes, not sure how that happened! I made my own marshmallow fondant because I find I like the taste of it better than store bought. I also experimented with using a white chocolate ganache under the 10 inch cake because I heard it made cake corners look sharper and smoother under the fondant. They were right! I definitely prefer the look of the fondant on ganache versus fondant on buttercream, as I did for the 8 inch and 12 inch layers. I used melting chocolate wafers traced on wax paper to make the birds, trees, sun, and little houses. I dyed the leftover fondant green and used that for the grassy area. I then added the trees etc using a bit of buttercream. The problem was that it was so warm in my kitchen and my hands were so warm that I kept breaking the trees as I was trying to put them on the cake! Good thing I made extra; I’m smart like that. I added some nice red ribbon at the base of each layer to complete the look. I actually ended up taking a bunch of final photos until I realized the next day that I had forgotten to add the river down the middle! I used a blue food writer to add it in after and had to take more photos. My kitchen was quite a mess after (because apparently if making a three tiered threadcake wasn’t enough, I also had an order of 70 cupcakes to make AND I was babysitting my niece and nephew!) So during my 4 day trial of making this cake, (baked the cake Tuesday, finished decorating Friday night) I also made chocolate chip cookies, a peach pastry turnover, 70 anniversary cupcakes and the kids made chocolate brownies. Apparently I love sugary goodness. I brought the final cake to work to eat on Monday and it was actually still really fresh a week later! I’m surprised.