Pond Cake

My dad's birthday was this past week. Being the cake decorator in the family, it generally falls to me to provide a birthday cake for anyone having a birthday. One of my dad's favorite things is his pond which he created. He dug out the hole (mostly with an ATV and plow attachment), acquired plants from various sources, and stocked it with fish (mostly goldfish, but there are a few koi). One of the more prominent features of his pond is the massive amount of frogs and toads living in it. My dad had surgery recently which prevented him from tending to his pond for a few weeks. This provided me with plenty of inspiration for his birthday cake.

I created the frogs using two small heart cakes, the pond is a 13 x 9 one layer cake, and I used very few decorating tools. The hardest part was making the water lily since there are no tutorials online for that type of flower. I may, at some point, write up a tutorial on how I made it. This cake, minus the water lily, should be rather easy for anyone to duplicate.

Things you will need:
box of cake mix (I always use Duncan Hines)
13 x 9 inch pan
heart pan (or heart cupcake foils)
decorator's frosting (tutorial forthcoming)
food coloring (green, blue, black, yellow)
parchment triangles (or strong food storage bags) & tape
bowls & spoons & butter knives
scissors
aluminum foil

The first thing you will need to do is bake the cake and let it cool completely. Be sure to prep your pans before baking (for more on how to do that, click here). After baking, you can let the hearts cool in the pan. The 13 x 9 inch cake, however, should be removed from the pan to cool. After cooling, prep a cake board for the 13x9 inch cake and set it aside (tutorial forthcoming).

Place the two cooled heart cakes on small pieces of foil. From your batch of decorator's frosting, place 1/2 cup of frosting in one bowl and a small amount (a few tablespoons) in another. Color the 1/2 cup of frosting green and the smaller amount of frosting yellow. With a butterknife, frost the top and sides of the heart cakes. Place the yellow frosting and remaining green frosting in a parchment bag with the tip cut off (or in a plastic bag with a corner cut off). Set all of this aside to let the frosting on the hearts harden a little.

Return to your cooled and prepped 13x9 inch cake. Place another half cup of frosting in a bowl and set aside. Color the remaining frosting blue. Frost the entire cake with the blue frosting. Be sure to leave texture in the frosting, you don't want it to be perfectly smooth. Color the 1/2 cup of frosting you set aside a shade of green lighter than the shade you used to color the heart cakes. Place 1/3 of this frosting in a parchment bag with the tip cut off.

To create the lily pads, start by figuring out how many you want and how you want them placed. With the bagged green frosting, draw a V on the cake where you want to place the first lily pad. Connect the top of the V with a large circle. With a butterknife, "paint" in the outlined lily pad with the remaining green frosting. Again, be sure to leave some texture. Repeat until the desired number of lily pads are painted onto the cake.

Return to the frog cakes. Add some yellow lines down the back and across the front of the frog and green blobs for eyes using the bagged frosting. Carefully placed the frog cakes onto the lily pads. For more detail, you can use a few tablespoons of the green frosting and color it black. Place the black frosting in another parchment bag and use it to draw lines on the back of the frog and dots for the eyes. You can also make little frog feet with the green frosting!