Baked: Nature Cake

Nature Cake

Forest Cake

Sugar Mushrooms

Cake Details

Cake Stump

Cake Banner

It's so refreshing to receive a cake request for a "Nature Cake" - especially when the request comes in directly from a six year old for her birthday cake. No commercial, character-driven, princess themes here, just a simple nature cake. Girl after my own heart! I had so much fun putting this cake together. Here's a few details and tips if you're looking to create something similar for your next cake.Perhaps my favorite part of the cake was the mushrooms. I made two different types of mushrooms - the taller, neutral ones were molded out of fondant and dusted with cocoa powder. The smaller ones were also made out of a white and a deep red-dyed fondant. Once set, I brush a light layer of sugar water on top and dipped them in a bowl of white sprinkles.The stump was made entirely out of buttercream. I used different colors of brown and ivory-dyed buttercream and used a brush technique to get the texture details on the trunk. The moss was a rice krispies and marshmallow mixture that was dyed a deep green. The acorns were molded out of caramel and modeling chocolate. The little ladybugs and bees were molded out of fondant. And for that deer - that gal was plastic! Recently when making cakes like this, I prefer to keep any big figurine details in plastic, so I don't have to charge additional for the time it would take to mold and paint a fondant figure. I personally don't see the point in molding a large fondant fixture that never gets consumed anywho when you have nice aesthetically-pleasing plastic options. And when I add on a plastic figurine, I make sure it fits with the look and feel I'm going for with the cake (like the dinos I painted for THIS cake).