I made this cake for my niece-in-law's son's first birthday - Happy Birthday, Luca! Luca's dad is an avid duck hunter, so of course the party had a duck hunting theme.
The bottom tier is a 9" round cake and stands about 5" tall. The top tier is a 6" round cake and stands about 5-1/3" tall. They are both frosted in American Buttercream.
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The background color of the cake is a soft green. I was trying to match the color of the invitations so I tested three gel colors that I had on hand: Juniper Green, Moss Green, and Avocado. In the end I picked the Juniper Green as the best color match.
After frosting and stacking the cakes, I moved onto the decorations. I found some images of flying ducks and a dog silhouette, and I made some cutters using my 3D printer. The dog cutter is about 3-3/4" tall, and the ducks range in size from 1-1/4" to 2-3/4" wide.
I also made some grass cutters, but they didn't work very well. The thin blades of fondant grass kept getting stuck in the cutter. After the disaster with the grass cutters, I planned on using frosting and a grass tip to make the grass, but sadly I ran out of frosting. I was lazy and didn't want to make another batch of frosting, so I ended up using a long razor blade to cut out each blade of grass from the fondant. It was a little time consuming to say the least, but in the end I got it done.
The dog and duck silhouettes were all cut from Wilton's Black fondant, and the grass was just random colors of green and brown fondant. Below is everything cut out and ready to go on the stacked cake.
When I frosted the cake I originally wanted the top tier to be mostly white with a swatch of light green at the base and the bottom tier to be lighter green and a swatch of darker green at the base. But something went wrong in my icing calculations and I didn't make enough, and then I colored too much with the light green color and didn't leave enough white. Below is what I had left after frosting the two cakes. I like to minimize the frosting I have left over (because it gets thrown away), but this was just too close for comfort. I should have given in and make more frosting.
So, because I didn't have enough white frosting, the top tier ended up being mostly green. No big deal, I guess. After the cake was frosted, I started putting on the silhouettes. Below is my first arrangement, but I didn't like the look of the big ducks, so I repositioned the dog on the other side of the cake and used more of the smaller ducks above the dog. I left the larger ducks on the cake, but they ended up being on the back of the cake. And at this point you can still see the darker green at the base - I should have made it taller, because later it got covered up by the fondant grass. - Oh well....
For the two mallard ducks sitting on the cake I used this YouTube video. They were super easy to make and took all of 10 minutes. I love it when things are quick and easy.
Here is the front of the cake again. It shows the dog staring longingly at the smaller ducks flying away. And don't you just love those little Mallard ducks!
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