Cake Decorating Ideas

This Tiki Hut Waterfall Cake was made for my 9 year old’s Hawaiian-themed birthday party. *All plastic pieces were purchased from a local grocery store.*

Prep work:
I started with two 1/4 sheet cakes. I left the first sheet cake whole and put a crumb coat on it. I also put 4 dowel rods in the back half of the cake. Next, I cut the second cake in half. I placed one half on a foil-wrapped cake board that had been cut just to fit. I placed this smaller cake on top of the dowel rods in the whole sheet cake and put a crumb coat on that, and put 4 dowel rods in the last half (going diagonally)
of the second tier.

I then cut the last 1/2 of the cake in half diagonally to form 2 triangles. I placed one of the triangles on a foil-wrapped cake board cut to fit, and placed this on top of the dowels in the second tier.
Finally, I put a crumb coat on this tier.

Decorating:
To decorate this cake, I carved a pool out of part of the bottom cake. I left it uneven and put a crumb coat on that part. Next, I used a toothpick to trace where I wanted my waterfall to run. I made a light blue
icing for this and iced that portion, starting at the top tier and running down the second tier to the bottom of the cake, where it fed into the pool. I used a butter knife to “rough up” the blue icing and form waves. Next, I used blue food coloring in a spray can to make the different shades in the water. Sparkling blue gel icing was used to form the “pool”. I used my finger to apply white icing where each tier met to make the water look rough, like it would on a real waterfall.

For the beach, I used crushed vanilla wafers, which I applied to the crumb coat. For the rest of this cake, I used the grass tip and green icing to form grass around the edges of the beach, around the sides of the waterfall on the 2nd and 3rd tiers. The tiki hut on the top tier was made from an over sized cupcake that I turned upside-down and the carved so that it tapered up and got smaller at the top.

I used the basket-weave decorating tip with tan icing to make the wooden “slats” on the sides of the hut and tip 3 with black icing to make the door. The top of the tiki hut came in the tiki kit that I purchased. However, if one doesn’t have access to a plastic roof, he may make one out of a piece of card stock rolled into a small cone and covered with a darker tan icing. The grass tip should be used to cover the roof, in order to create a “thatch” effect.

First Name: Jennifer
City-State: Dacula, GA