A cake fit for a 2 year old!

Alright, so this is absolutely the last cake! For August is over and so are all the small people's birthdays. Done and dusted. Or done and decorated ;-)

Anyone would think that I do a lot of cake making! Really, I don't!!! Unless it's the month of August. It's our month of birthdays and I cook and cook and cook... Just check out the August Archive!

This cake was probably the easiest one of all. It was for the littlest one, the 2 year old. There were no requests, actually I didn't ask 'cos I was petrified she'd say 'Dora cake'. She's obsessed at the moment; ah, the mind of a 2 year old. So with this cake I had free rein, and I had to do it all by myself. That's not normal around here. Normally it's a last minute, night-before, very late activity. But on this day even Mr Helpful was at work, so it was all me.

I knew what I wanted to do. I'd even talked it over with Mr Helpful! He'd approved my engineering concepts ;-) I just had to do it.

First, came the cake. A chococate mud cake, found here. This is the same cake that we used to make the 'You are my sunshine' cake. Tried, true and terrific!

Then came the ganache, or grenache as I told my lovely mother-inlaw in a cake induced moment of madness! Can you tell I used to work in winegrapes?! Grenache is an italian winegrape variety, and a nice sweet wine! Not for icing a mud cake at all.

For the ganache I actually used 3/4 milk chocolate to 1/4 dark chocolate. A little less rich for small people. I'd probably do this again if small people were going to eat it. Very yummy!

Then the cake was transformed into a back garden. It had beautiful 'grass' laid; coconut soaked in green food-colouring. Some 'rock' borders and mounds were created. These chocolate rocks were great, I allowed myself just one to be sure that they were alright more human consumption! We have some crazy paving in the form of broken chocolate melts, laid into the grass and ganache. Then, of course, the piece de resistance! A swing. This is simply two bendy straws, held together at the top with a twisty tie inserted inside the straws,  and with one straw pinched/pushed through the other. I put a kebab squewer in each leg of the swing and stuck it down through the cake. Worked a treat! The swing seat was icing, and the 'chain' was plain old string.

Finally I added the flowers and foliage. No garden is complete without flowers hey?!

Here's one 'growing' up through the crazy pavers - lucky Mr Helpful doesn't live in this garden, he'd have the herbicide out!

There are even flowers 'growing' in the rock mound, so maybe it's a rock garden hey?

I even attempted to make a couple of trees. I will NOT tell you what Mr Helpful called them ;-) The littlest one knew they were trees, that's what matters isn't it?! Isn't it??? :-) 

The way her eyes lit up when the cake was presented to her was enough for me...

The best thing about this cake is that it's YUMMY! You know how some decorated kids cakes look great but upon eating actually make you feel about the same colour as the techno icing? Well, this one is green on top but the green doesn't have a taste, at all! Truly! And underneath that green it's all chocolate. We have taken about 4 days to eat the cake and it gets better every day. Yum! Lucky August comes but once a year I say!!!

Tomorrow we're out of the kitchen and into the shearing shed... Ah, the contrasts of my life! Will get on with the day now, fingers crossed we don't have the horrid wind of yesterday. It started about 11am and blew all day and all night... Today I'm attacking the other small people's room today, and with sheets to wash I'm just hoping they don't blow right off the clothesline! Here's to a peaceful day.