In trying to decide the perfect cake for my daughter's 5th birthday party, we decided on doing a bug themed cake since she is always catching bugs. She loves to be outside and exploring. We did a bug cake for her when she turned 2, so we wanted this to turn out a little differently. After a bit of exploring ideas on the web, we decided to turn the cake into a big toadstool. The top is made from a three layer 9 inch round cake (we even experimented with our new checkerboard cake thing--which was actually a little bit tricky to pour the batter into and we made a huge mess). We cut around the top egde to give it a dome shape, then put it on a 9 inch cake circle and frosted it in red and added the white spots. The base of the mushroom was made out of my 6 x 4 inch cake pan, covered in white fondant.
Finally, we used some of the cake we cut from the edge to build up around the base of the mushroom, then covered it with chocolate frosting and added some grass.
All that was left was adding some little critters. My husband figured out how to make a few of the butterflies and dragonflies "fly" around the cake.
The Toadstool Cake was for my daughter's friend party. Then we traveled west to attend the wedding of my husband's brother, and it just so happens that his fiance (now wife) and my daughter share a birthday. Their birthday was just a day or so before the wedding, so we had a big party that day. I used my 10 inch and 6 inch pans to bake the cake, and unfortunately I forgot that there are special instructions for baking cakes at high altitudes, so I had to make an extra grocery store run and attempt the actual baking twice since my first cakes fell. Oh well, at least I learned something. I decorated this cake with cream cheese frosting, fresh berries, and white chocolate drizzled over the berries.
The roses are made from fondant, and it took me 10 hours or so to make them all. 