Crissa's Cake Corner!: Camping Cake

So if you live the tropics, where humidity is pretty much 100% and the average temperature is well over 35C, roughing it out camping probably wouldn't be high on your list of recreational activities. Plus, tropical bugs suck. Don't get me wrong. Camping is awesome. I love camping in places with a temperate climate, surrounded by giant redwoods, jumping into a nearby lake and telling ghost stories and roasting marshmallows around the campfire at night... Just not here. Haaa.

Camping Cake

This cake is for an avid young camper, celebrating her 7th birthday. Maybe her parents will take her out glamping in one of those fancy air-conditioned tents to celebrate! Anyway, the cake is vanilla butter, filled with decadent dark chocolate ganache and frosted with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream.

camping out in the woods cake

I had a lot of fun making the fondant decorations, especially the toes on the guy sleeping in the tent! The tent itself was a bit tricky. I had to brainstorm how to construct it, starting off with building a wooden frame out of BBQ sticks. Well, lets just say that that idea didn't work.

totally unnecessary wooden frame for the tent

The solution couldn't have been any easier. Eventually I figured that all I had to do was bend a piece of cardstock in half and prop it upside down like a tent, and then drape the fondant over that! Once the fondant was dry (overnight in an air-conditioned room), I removed the cardstock and boom, easy peasy fondant tent!

snoozing camper. let's hope the mosquitoes don't get his toes

Now for the camp fire, I wanted it to double as a candle. I cut flames out of red, yellow and orange fondant, stuck them together with a little water, and then pushed a candle in the middle of it. The flame candle is supported by a BBQ stick, poked through the pile of logs.