Where My Peeps At?!

The title will make sense after you read about this one. Trust me. :)

     

It was Easter so the only thing I could think of was an Easter basket. This is the first cake that I made by my own design. I had an idea in my head and I ran with it. This is the beginning. Obviously I made 4 cakes, 2 8in and 2 10in. I cut one of the 10in layers at an angle to give it the shape of a basket (I know, it looks like a flower pot). With the top layer of cake I cut it to simulate the depth of a basket and gave it a bit of a lip like baskets have. The biggest mistake I made was actually "scoring" the cake before I took out the middle part. I actually lost half of the "lip" because there wasn't enough cake left and the buttercream was too heavy...sooooo I made that the back.

  

This was interesting. Initially I was going to use one piece and wrap it around the cake. That wasn't working. So I just figured I'll do it in panels, but there would be a seam. Mom to the rescue! As you can see in the pic on the right, I used the stems of the flowers to cover the seams. And I added a grass border on the bottom for a little texture. Easy fix.

  

In the area that I carved out I added the contents of the "basket". All of the candy is real, the robin's eggs, peeps, and chocolate bunny. The grass is actually green buttercream. I used a grass tip to pipe the grass in. I put the candy in first and filled the rest in with the grass. I cut a hole in the cake for the bunny to sit in so he was sturdy. 

  

The last thing to put on the cake was the handle. I braided 3 different ropes of fondant and let it dry in a pizza pan overnight. The pizza pan allowed me to get the shape I was looking for. The individual ropes were too thick so it didn't dry all the way causing it to be too heavy to keep it's shape. So I brought it to the party and put it in for the sake of taking pictures. I think I'm starting to get the hang of this cake thing. Good times!