The Barnyard Cake

I have to say...I loved making this cake! All the little farm animals were so incredibly fun to make. Thanks to my friend, C, for doing this cake with me!

It all started when C and I were talking about cakes one day this past Fall. She expressed some interest in learning how to use fondant, so I offered to do a cake with her for her baby's first birthday and show her a bit about working with fondant. My sister had made this cake a few months before and it had turned out so amazingly, I wanted to try my hand at it. Since C didn't have much of a preference for a theme, I showed her a picture of this kind of cake and she said that sounded good to her! So we planned to get together one night to drape and decorate the cake just before her daughters birthday this past November.

That week I spent a few evenings making all the little farm animals so they would have a bit of a chance to dry. I started molding animals and realized how much fun I was having! The ladybugs were my favorite. They were so cute and terribly fun to make...even though they were so small. I finished the cows, pigs, sheep, ducks and ladybugs and set them aside to dry for a few days so they would be a bit easier to put on the cake.


C came over the night before the party and we decorated late into the evening. She took charge of the top tier, covering it in fondant and putting the fence on. She did a fabulous job! We then figured out where each of the animals was going to go and placed them on the cake with toothpicks and piping gel (the cake-makers glue). C went to work cutting out flowers and I made the pond on the top of the cake. After a quick little bit of buttercream around the cakes for some grass (I had lent out my grass icing tip, so we improvised on that one) and we were finished. We were so proud of our work!


This was my favorite cake to make so far. I absolutely loved how it turned out and everything went so smoothly!

C's daughter seemed to love the cake (at least the picture she sent of her daughter munching on a pig suggested she was having a good time with it!) And all the kids at the party had fun with it, too. That's the best part of making cakes...seeing people enjoy it.