Thanksgiving Planning

This would be a really elegant presentation.

Start with a white or yellow cake with maple nut or caramel frosting, something cream colored. You could also make a buttercream or cream cheese frosting that you add food color to. You could even do chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. Whatever…just so your cake and frosting go well together, and your frosting is a light tan color.

Then make some basic harvest shaped stencils. You can probably trace cookie cutter insides onto a large piece of poster board. Pumpkins, leaves, pilgrim hats, whatever. As much as possible, use large cardboards with small (3-4 inch) shapes, about 12 inches apart, so you have an easier time protecting your cake.

Then prepare a few small baggies of granulated or powdered sugar. Create a different color in each bag using different combinations of food colors, to yield brown, yellow, orange, red, and cream colors. Seal and shake each color to mix. You want colors that stand out nicely from your frosting without clashing. You can also add cinnamon, all spice, etc to some of the powdered sugars (if it goes with your cake and frosting flavors), and if you want some texture, you can use some coconut.

Then using the buddy system, have one person hold the stencil very still over the cake (not touching), while the other person sprinkles sugar into the opening with a small screen-scoop. Then change stencils, and sugars, and repeat. You can layer them like a collage but don’t overlap or get carried away so much that you lose each image. You will probably have best results if you layer your darker sugars on the bottom but this is not a hard and fast rule.

This is best for a 9×13 or jelly roll or sheet cake. You can make a layer cake but only the top can be stenciled. If you do a layer cake, you could press handfulls of graham crumbs or coconut or anything…into the sides. Do this last so it covers up any mess from the sugar stenciling.

If you try this, I would love to hear how it turns out!
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I’m going to make a cornucopia cake, using the wonder mold pan (the one that makes a doll skirt) turned on its side, with a piece cut off of the side so it will sit flat. Then I’ll cover it with woven snakes of brown fondant to look like a primitive basket, and make marzipan fruit and vegetables to be spilling out of it, along with a few fall leaves made of gumpaste with little gold accents. It will be sitting on a black fondant covered board. We’re going to use it for a centerpiece for the table and then serve it for dessert.

Another really cute idea that I’ve seen is to bake a round layer cake, frost it to look like a candle (use fondant or buttercream that’s smoothed well), and then put several tea light candles in the top, which you can light.
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