John Deere Farm Cake
My two-year-old loves the outdoors. He loves being outside almost as much as he loves his little John Deere tractor riding toy. He and my older son have driven enough miles on that thing to circumnavigate the Earth.
So it was a no-brainer that his 2nd birthday cake would have a John Deere theme. This cake was lots of fun and not too stressful – lots of cute fondant farm animals, and very few major feats of cake engineering required.
The Cake
I went with my chocolate chunk cake recipe for this – it’s delicious, dense, and provides a good, stable base.
The lower, rectangular part of the cake is just two sheet cakes layered with frosting. The round section was tall – very tall. If I had made it out of cakes, it would have taken four big layers. So instead I did a three-layer cake. Then I made up a batch of Rice Krispies treats, pressed it into my round cake pan, and when it cooled I had a light, strong foundation for the cake. I cut out a corner of the rectangular layer so the round layer would fit in close. Then I used my serrated knife to cut in the road, and iced the whole thing in green icing.
And the icing, as always, is my Best Ever Cake Frosting. The road is covered in graham crackers, which I crushed by hand instead of in the food processor so the “dirt” would be uneven and “rocky”. The topsoil in the garden is crushed Oreos.
The Farmer and Tractor
I learned the hard way that large pieces shouldn’t be made entirely out of fondant. It’s way too heavy and takes a lot of engineering and a lot of luck to keep them upright. Instead, I sculpted the tractor and wheels out of Rice Krispies treats and covered it with a thin layer of fondant. It’s all held together with some strategically placed wooden skewers.
The Barn
The barn is also made of Rice Krispies treats. I made two squares, then cut one of them into two triangles and used those to make the roof. The hay in the upper window is just very thin strips of yellow fondant, applied by dabbing a little water of the end with a small paintbrush.
Stay Tuned… there’s more how-to to come!