Garden Cake and Dirt Cake

I know, a little over a month behind. But....For Missy and Seppy's birthday party I thought we'd go with something easy and make two dirt cakes. I planned that Missy's would be in a cute pot with flowers on top and Seppy's would be in a pail with gummy worms. Well, Sep went along with my plan but of course Missy Blue had plans of her own. I was a little surprised that she wanted an actual cake as she does not especially like cake but "everyone else does". Admittedly I was a little irritated in the beginning because her plans would be much more work. But I am truly thankful that she has a creative little mind and is able to express that. And in the end many hands made light work. Somehow I forget that everyone here likes to be creative so I don't have to look far for help.

Missy wanted to have a garden cake. A friend of theirs had entered one in the County Fair and so we went online and found some ideas. That along with the Hello Cupcake book from my sister and we had our design.

The cake was a chocolate 9 X 13 cake made with a recipe and a half so that it baked higher. I had planned on making two layers but it was much easier this way.

We covered it in a light layer of chocolate frosting although in hindsight that wasn't really necessary. and we could have used all green. The dirt was made with crushed oreos which worked perfectly with Sep's dirt cake. The arrangement of the veggies was done by Missy of course.

The kids all shaped the veggies out of Starburst and Airheads candy. Although the orange starburst is not anything close to the color of a pumpkin so I added a bit of orange food coloring to it and mixed it. Lettuce is cornflakes mixed with melted butter, marshmallow, almond extract and green coloring (like Christmas wreath cookies -- yum!) and topped with an M&M.

The carrots were made out of portions of candy corn. The original carrots were shaped out of starbursts but looked so pale that we turned them into potatoes and rolled them in "dirt".

Pete added his own creative touch in making cobs of corn (something we didn't see in any examples). And then he went on to pipe the "grass".

Seppy really liked Missy's cake and decided that next year he will have a cake that is more fun too! But he definitely thought his tasted better!