Harvest Cake

by Janelle Hayes
(Pittsburgh, PA)

Harvest Cake on Display

Harvest Cake - Side View

Harvest Cake - Prior to Assembly

Harvest Cake - Assembled Rose

The Harvest Cake was made for a local Boy Scout Group. It is a two-tier chocolate cake with a peanut butter large basket weave frosting. The flowers and leaves are made out of a mixture of fondant and gum paste.

The individual cakes are made from two layers of chocolate cake, with a layer of peanut butter filling. First, the top layer of frosting was applied and smoothed using a straight edge spatula. Then the basket weave was created using a basket weave tip, piping bag, and turn table.

Small lollipop sticks were inserted into the bottom tier to support the weight of the 2nd tier. The two tiers, 9” and 6”, were made separately and assembled onsite.

The flowers and leaves were created over a period of several days. The black-eyed susans were made of white fondant colored with buttercup yellow icing color.

Each flower is two layers of fondant created using a daisy shaped cutter. The petals were formed using the dog-bone shaped fondant tool. The layers were then adhered using gum glue, which is a mixture of water and gum paste.

The centers were made from white fondant mixed with black icing color, and rolled into a ball. A small circle cutter was used, and the circle quartered to ensure that each ball was the same size.

The balls were then coated with gum glue and rolled in black sprinkles. Finally, the balls were pasted to the yellow flowers.

Prior to assembling the roses, several bases were made by adhering a small cone made of white fondant to the end of a piece of spaghetti using gum glue.

I created the

rose petals out of white fondant colored with two shades of red icing color. The fondant was rolled very thin and 3 layers were cut out using a 5-petal cutter. The petals were then shaped using a ball tool on 2 different types of foam.

The individual petals were thinned out and the center of each petal was pressed in with the ball tool. The spaghetti piece was then driven through the center of each cutout and the petals formed around the dried cone assembled earlier and adhered with gum glue. This was repeated for each of the three layers.

Finally, a calyx was cut out of white fondant colored with green icing color and pasted on the base of the rose.

The small blossoms were made using a cutout and then formed over a piece of textured silicone. A small sugar pearl was pasted in the center of the blossom using gum glue.

Fondant leaves were created using 2 different leaf cutouts. In order to achieve the fall colored effects, 3 different colors of fondant were twisted together.

Red, orange and yellow were used for the maple leaves and brown, green and orange were used for the other leaves. The fondants were twisted together just enough that they formed one solid strand, but not so long that the colors were mixed. It was then rolled thin and the cutouts were used. A veining tool was used to add texture to the leaves.

All the fondant items were placed in forming cups and given time to dry out before being placed. A small amount of frosting was used to attach the fondant pieces to the cakes.