Tractors and trails and puppy dog tails

Andrew asked for a tractor cake this year, after switching on and off with the notion of an owl cake for about two months. It seems, the cake is a VITAL part of the celebration and needs to be thought about often in order to ensure the PERFECT pick.

I toyed with the options. I could make a 3D shape one, but frosting the dumb thing seemed too----strenuous? I could buy a tractor shaped pan-but that would cost money. Next I thought~I'll decorate the cake with a frontal view of a tractor using icing and then put a cut out photo of Andrew as the driver. But then, I screwed my head on the right way and realized-there just ain't no way I could draw a realistic (or even cartoony) tractor with icing.

So once again. Lazy bones Mama takes the easy way out. I raided the toybox and found one of his toy tractors.

But, plopping a toy tractor on a cake just doesn't give it the proper birthday OOMPH! So I decided to try my hand at fondant.

(I know about fondant now, because one evening while visiting my inlaws, they had the TV on to a show about extreme cakes and oh.my.goodness. I have never seen such amazing craziness in all my life. I left there house wanting. yearning. PINING to try out fondant.)

As I suspected, fondant is super fun to play with. Like edible playdough. Only problem is~I don't much like the taste. It lacks pizazz. Nevertheless, the fun factor makes up for the flavor and without it, I couldn't have created NEARLY as nice a three-dimensional garden as I did! I mean, BEAN teepee?! Try to do THAT with icing!



The insides were carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. The soil was cookie crumbs. The grass was green coconut.

And the BOY played with the tractor like he had never seen it before and asked for seconds on vegetables.


We had meatloaf and mashed taters on the patio for dinner under a golden sunset and the children danced and danced while waiting for me to finish the sherbert punch cups I made specially for the celebration.



Papa had to work late so the cake cutting was well-anticipated. Now was about the time my head began to hurt, so that put a kabash on the photos of opening presents. That's ok~present opening doesn't last very long at our house anyway.

My personal favorite of Andrew's gifts was the one wrapped in a tissue and tied with a pink ribbon. It was a piece of coal.

From his sister.

Coal, scouted out and discovered in our basement among gravel fragments, is a real treasure round here. No need to spoil the fun with reality.