Happy Birthday to Ewe!

Here's the final creation... using the sheep, the tree, and the cake covered in white chocolate ganache. I'm so happy with the way this turned out! I got the idea for this cake from various ones in the galleries on http://cakecentral.com/.

I made this cake for a very good friend of mine... it was her boyfriend's birthday and the sheep things is a bit of an inside joke between them. It's also one of my very first cake orders!

Note the $10 wooden lazy susan from IKEA that works awesome as a turntable! Much better than the $90 one I tried from Wilton.

This was my first time 'painting' on a cake. Basically, you mix some color gel with vodka until it's the consistency of watercolor paint. I then used an angled brush to make the grass strokes. It was much easier than I expected! Though the above is a pic of the good side... 

 The side i started out on (the back of the cake) was not as good.

I used Tappits to make the letters. Make sure to use cornstarch/powdered sugar on the surface and the tappit so that it's easier to get the letters out.

I found that rolling the gumpaste a bit thicker than recommended made it easier to handle and remove. At times I had to pry the letters out of the tappit with a toothpick if they got stuck, but the still turned out really well.

A bit blurry/messy but you get the idea.

I let the letters dry before attaching them to the cake, but only because I did this part in advance. You don't need to let them try before attaching them with gum glue.

I finished the cake off with some white gumpaste flowers, a fence, some rocks, and some royal icing grass to cover the bottom edge. It took *forever* to get that green color for the royal icing. I swear I used over half of the color gel I had!

The cake board and rocks are made from marbling white, black and grey fondant together. For the board I used a cobblestone impression mat once I rolled out the fondant.

Have I mentioned how happy I am with how the sheep turned out?? LOVE them!