This cake was one of the most complicated cakes I have attempted so far. I was really happy with how it turned out though! I made this for a friend's Birthday who is really into hiking and the outdoors.
For the actual cake, I cheated and used a Devil's Food Cake boxed cake from Wal-Mart. I made two 9 inch circles and two 6 inch circles. I made them a lot thicker than I normally do because I wanted this to be a taller cake to make the water fall look more impressive. The 9 inch pans that I used were from a yard sale and the 6 inch ones cost me 8 dollars at Wal-Mart and the cakes turned out great!
Once the cakes cooled, I cut their tops flat and stacked them. I also cheated for the middle and used Hershey's frosting. I did whip it with a blender first because I really like the texture better.
To begin, I briefly stacked the cakes so that I could determine where my water feature would go. I pushed my top layer all the way back instead of centering it to give more room for a landscape. I used a knife to carve a nice waterfall and a place on top for a little "lake".
I then unstacked by cakes and did a crumb coat. I used Kelley Green food coloring in buttercream for the "grass" and Teal for the waterfall. Once this was dry, I applied the top coat of buttercream to both layers. I smoothed the "grass" out pretty nicely (but not perfect) but I left the "water" pretty choppy. After that had dried a bit, I placed some support rods and stacked by cake. I cut wooden skewer sticks to use as dowl rods and I cut a piece of cardboard to use as my support under the top layer.
At this time, I took a little break to let my icing dry more and made some "boulders". I did this by mixing my left over cake pieces and frosting (essentially making cake balls) . I molded my little balls into different sized rocks and boulders and put them in the freezer while I made some chocolate to cover them with. I wanted a nice, gray color so I used white almond bark and mixed in black chocolate pieces (picked these up at Walmart) until I had the color I wanted. After I dipped my "rocks" I set them back in the freezer for a little bit.
Once my boulders were finished, I placed them on my cake, making sure to put a few in the water as well. I felt like they didn't look natural enough, so I thinned a little bit of buttercream and used food coloring to paint black and brown on them to give them a little extra texture. I used a cheap set of watercolor brushes for this.
I didn't have a grass tip, so I used a leaf tip and a darker green icing to make some vegetation. I also used the darker green color around the edges of the water to break up the green a little. I ordered some trees off of Amazon to give things a more realistic look so I went ahead and placed those as well.
I ordered milk chocolate river rocks off of Amazon and used those in the waterfall. I also placed these all around the cake when I was finished to break up the blank spaces a bit. For the actual water, I made sure to cover all of the cake in a teal icing and then I used a clear gel to make it look like water. I used a thinned down buttercream to give a little texter to the water and make it look like rapids around the rocks and down the falls. This was my first time working with a gel like this. It is super sticky! It works a lot better if you wait a few hours after applying it to give it "texture" as well.
I used graham cracker crumbs with cocoa powder on top to create the banks of the river. I ordered the canoe off of Amazon to really set it off. I used the river rocks to make a little fire ring on the bank and I stuck the birthday candle in the middle of that as the "campfire". My original intention was to put a tent there, but the tent ended up being a little too big for my area.
This was super fun to make and was a big hit at the birthday party. You could save yourself time and trouble by not making your own boulders and just using the river rocks instead. If I had a grass tip, I would have down a lot more "grass" around to break up the surface a bit.
Have fun!
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