the flower bed birthday cake

My sweet daughter turned 3 yrs old on Saturday!  She LOVES flowers.  So, for her birthday, this is the cake I came up with.  The bottom (dirt) portion is just a chocolate layer cake with extra crumbs put on top and around.  The flowers were made using Bakerella's cake pop recipe.  You can check it out on her website www.bakerella.com. There are lots of insanely cute variations.  This variation was what I came up with to make the flowers on the cake.  I will give you a quick summary of how I made them.

First I made the center for the cake pops, which is just one cake mix (I used chocolate here) baked and crumbled into crumbs with one container of cream cheese frosting added and mixed in.  I also added some mini m&m's to the mix.  After it's thoroughly mixed, I shaped it into balls using an ice cream scoop, making sure that one side remained flat, so that I would have a place to adhere the fondant flowers to.  So after I shaped the balls, I put them in the freezer long enough for them to get stiff enough to hold onto the sticks and hold their shape while being dipped.

Meanwhile, I had my two boys coloring 8 inch sucker sticks green with their nontoxic markers.  I purchased one bag of green candy melts and a local craft store.  I melted them in the microwave and when the balls were stiff enough, I took them out one at a time, inserted one of the newly colored sucker sticks and dipped it into the green melted candy melts and place it in a jar or vase for the candy melts to finish hardening up on the cake pops.

To make the flowers, I bought a small package of fondant that had 4 colors inside and a small set of flower fondant shape cutters.  We rolled out the fondant and cut it into the various sized flowers and used a small amount of simple syrup to adhere them together and to the cake pops.  I think water sticks them together just as well, I just had a bit of simple syrup leftover from the cake.  So, to finish it off, We stuck the flowers into the cake and put a small amount of green frosting near the base of each flower.  And it was finished! And my daughter loved it!  Mission accomplished!

A few tips I would give to anyone who decides to make this.  Wait until just before serving to insert the flowers.  The sucker sticks may soften in the cake and start to bend.  Or, you could use wooden skewers instead of the sucker sticks which probably would hold their shape for longer.