1. Crumb coat your cakes (see Covering Cakes). Use your palette knife to apply enough light grey buttercream to cover the cakes, then use the cake scraper to evenly distribute it all over.
Here’s something completely different. By blending natural shades with a palette knife, we have created a life-like silver birch stump on which a selection of succulents and bright yellow flowers look perfectly at home. The blending effect is not hard to achieve, as long as you don’t over-do it. Less is more for this unusual and intriguing design.
1. Crumb coat your cakes (see Covering Cakes). Use your palette knife to apply enough light grey buttercream to cover the cakes, then use the cake scraper to evenly distribute it all over.
2. Apply small amounts of darker grey buttercream randomly and smudge the colour using your palette knife.
3. Run your scraper around the cake in one direction, either clockwise or counter-clockwise. You can scrape it bit by bit using short strokes (see tip).
4. Repeat the same process with black and caramel buttercream. Do not overdo it, but aim for a realistic colouring.
5. Using black buttercream, add few random horizontal lines all around your cake, then scrape these too.
6. Apply dark yellow buttercream on top of the cake in a circular motion, then use a palette knife to spread it. Use a circular motion to give the impression of concentric tree stump rings.
7. Use a cocktail stick (toothpick) and make random dents to give a peeled bark effect.
When blending the colours, it is not necessary to run the scraper all the way round the cake in one go. You may make shorter strokes, as long as they are horizontal and in one direction only.
1. Stack the cakes, then start the decorative elements by piping the ferns.
2. Make and freeze the echeveria (see Freezing) then position them on the cake. If you need to manipulate them into position push two cocktail sticks (toothpicks) into the sides, rather than using your warm fingers. Make sure to pipe blobs of buttercream underneath them to give depth.
3. Pipe the other succulents directly onto the side of the cake, then the craspedia, buttercups, and random leaves (see Leaves) using dark green buttercream.
