Gabriel's 1st Birthday Cake

Despite having said countless times that I wasn't going to go "over the top" for Gabriel's 1st birthday (y,know, because he's ONE and couldn't care less)...I did go a little bit nuts on his cake.

OK, so first things first.
I have spent weeks gradually making all the decorations from modelling chocolate. I also made far too many decorations. Meh, better over-prepared than under-prepared right?

I just did a few things each night and stored them in layers of baking paper in an airtight container.
They're all made from Aldi Choceur chocolate and Glucose syrup + Americolour gel paste colouring. Tools? My hands and one ratty paintbrush.
Oh, except the mushrooms, they're meringue painted with melted dark chocolate and dusted with cocoa.

Obviously the theme is 'Autumn Forest'..kinda sorta. Blueberries are a summer-forest-thing, but why let little details get in the way? This isn't a National Geographic cake competition.

Next step, bake the cakes in question.
The bottom layer is a caramel mud and the top layer is a banana/yoghurt cake. Both turn out very dense and moist and easily take fondant.

So, here we are, all set up with ganache for the crumb coating and various decorations.

I don't mind admitting that this was all making me very nervous. As my second cake (proper-fondanty-thing), so much was liable to go wrong here. I knew what I was aiming for, but having no actual training in this stuff, was not entirely sure I could pull it off.

OK, so layer one.

lacking wooden dowelling rods, I decided to trust Martha Stewart and use drinking straws. She assures me that for a paltry two layers, this is support enough....

 Ganache crumb coat

 'Lid' of fondant tree-rings. This wasn't very clever at all. I just shaped the fondant into a flat cylinder, painted on lines in gel-paste (Chocolate brown, warm brown and a dash of egg-yellow), rolled it up like a swiss-roll,cut it, and then rolled it flat. Lo-and-behold, -tree rings :-)

 Rolled 'bark' base fondant. Basically, just badly mixed browns.

 Measured the cake height and cut out a strip of fondant to match.

decided that the bark-brown looked nothing like bark and started tearing and adding fondant scraps.

Scored everything with a toothpick and added some 'cracks'

Painted to the cracks with black gel-paste (with aforementioned ratty paintbrush)

Attacked fondant-scrappy sides with warm brown and chocolate brown gel-paste

Posted photo on Facebook to see if anyone thought it looked log-like. Fortunately, it turned out that most people thought it did. Phew. I sat down with a cuppa and steeled myself to do it all over again for the second layer.

Then it was just a matter of placing (and glueing with melted chocolate) the many and varied decorations. there was no specific plan here, just a riotous autumnal profusion.

Yes yes, I know it's too much, -but it is for a child...

And there's a frog.

I just felt like making a frog.

So that's it for this year!. Now I just have to sort out the 'magic tree' (wouldn't you like to know? :-), the hay bales, the various pumpkin and autumn leaf decorations, and of course, the food.
My 'not-over-the-top' 1st Birthday is a friggin' 4-month production.
His second birthday will be a BBQ in a park. I swear it.