Monday 1 April 2013

Stealth Cake for an April Fool's Birthday

Last year for Becky's Birthday, there was a lot going on, so her birthday got kinda missed. I wanted to make up for it this year.

I haven't played up the April Fool's Day part of her birthday for a while, but I like to try to do fun cakes. This year, she was too old for any of the small toys I saw that could be used to decorate it, but I had the idea to do her cake in a flower pot with fake flowers. I've made "Dirt Cake" in the past, but that's an entirely different thing. Becky wanted an actual cake, so I needed something solid. Here's what I came up with. It worked great!

 


So...how did this work?

You will need:

Fake Flowers
Flower Pot
Chocolate Cake
Pound Cake
(Gummi Worms or other mix-ins optional)


To make the dirt, you'll need a chocolate cake. Pick a flavor that you want (or the one that's the right color) and bake it to the package directions in two round pans. (I added some dark chocolate chunks to the batter for a slightly more rocky texture.

After baking the cake, let it cool completely. 

I needed a solid base for my cake, and the pot was much bigger than my cake was going to be, so I put a saucer in the bottom of the pot.

Trim  the cake layers to the size of the bottom of your pot, or your saucer. Put the parts that you trim off into a bowl. This'll be used to make the dirt texture on top.





Next, cut a circle of poundcake. This will work kind of like floral styrofoam that holds flowers in flower arrangements.






Cut a hole in one layer of the chocolate cake. Assemble the cake in the flower pot...solid layer of chocolate cake on the bottom, and the pound cake in the middle of the top layer of chocolate cake. Stick the flowers in the pound cake in the arrangement you want.


Next, make the dirt for on top. Crumble the trimmed bits of chocolate cake so they are the consistency of potting soil. I found some ice-cream mix-ins that I could add which made it look even more like potting soil.





Then, gently arrange the crumbled bits around the stems on the top of the cake.




Looked real enough to fool the girls. I put it on the table in the hall, and they walked past it until after dinner, not even suspecting that it was a cake. I told Becky that I had forgotten to bake her one...and she believed me. It worked GREAT!











1 comment:

  1. Awesome! I hadn't realised she's another April Fool. We're going to take over the world at some point, in our own unique way... ;-)

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