Picnic Cake

If you want to have a great cake for a barbeque or a picnic, try one like this:

I made a double batch of white cake in two 9x13" pans. I stacked them with buttercream icing in between. I used my new "grass" tip (picture a tip with a flat top with 11 holes in it like a salt shaker) and made green buttercream "grass". To cover the cake took about an hour.

Then I applied the picnic blanket. It was made of rolled fondant mixed with gum paste. First, I made strips of red and white fondant/gum paste using my fondant ribbon maker set at 1/2 inch. I lined those up and rolled over them lightly with a rolling pin. Then, I cut strips in the other direction and lifted each of those strips and offset the squares to make the checkerboard. It was all laid out on my roll and cut mat, so when the checkerboard was done, I could "flip" it onto the cake.

All of the picnic items were formed in advance from a mix of fondant and gum paste.  They were left to dry for about a week. To finish the cake, I just placed the picnic items on the picnic blanket and piped the greeting with white buttercream icing.

The trickiest part was definately the picnic blanket. The squares didn't always want to stay together. The most fun part was making the little hot dogs and hamburgers. Those took about 3 hours to form, so it wasn't quick, but I would have been quicker if I didn't have to color the fondant first. It was worth the effort. Happy Picnic-ing!