I decided against a tier cake because I wanted to make sure each person was equally represented. The idea popped into my head of making a cake that looked like a table top with three cakes sitting on top. The more I thought about it the better I liked the idea. I still think it was a great idea, but it turned out to be a little more work then I anticipated! My neighbour is a quilter so it was easy to come up with a theme for her cake. (She makes amazing quilts. I can only hope that one day I'll make a quilt like the ones she makes.) Her dad is an retired farmer. That was simple enough. I struggled a little with the daughter, but then found out she likes to cook, so I went with a cooking theme.
For just about all the cakes I make, I will draw it out in Paint first just to make sure it looks the same as the image I have in my head! In this case there was so much going on and so many different colours that I was having a hard time putting it all together. So, in Paint, I drew it out and experimented with the colours and came up with something that worked.
It helped!
I did all the colour flow on a couple different evening earlier in the week. Friday rolled around and I got to baking cakes. Three little ones and a big sheet cake. It was a lot of cake. I started decorating after the kids went to bed. My brother and his family, and my sister were visiting so we chatted as I decorated. Then, as it got later, they went to bed and soon it was just me and my sister. She offered to help, so I put her to work.
The first cake was for Lorne, the farmer. Since it is harvest time I made a red combine (he drove International) and wheat stocks on a nice sunny day, perfect for combining. Because I didn't want to cover the whole cake with tiny wheat stocks I stuck some grasshoppers on the back!
The second cake was for Colleen, my neighbour. I wrote her name with a spool thread, got my sister making fondant quilt and put a sewing machine on the back.
For Kimberley, I need to find a recipe that would fit on my tiny cookbook. I came up with shortbread cookies. When I was leaving home I copied as many of my Mom's awesome recipes as I could and I only wrote very basic instructions. This is the shortest recipe I have! On the back of her cake there are a set for measuring spoons.
I put it all together, and here is what it looked like...
...the Happy Birthday sign is a fondant napkin. The only thing was wasn't happy with was the "table". The table cloth didn't really turn out. I should have did it a little differently.
Top view...
Back view...
All in all, I was pretty happy with it,
And more importantly it went over well with my neighbour and her family!
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