I am not a baker at all, in fact my cakes usually fall apart. However, I decided to try my hand at decorator cakes for the first time this fall for my oldest and youngest sons’ birthdays, (each of their cakes are on this website) so my middle son was of course expecting the same caliber of cake when his birthday came around a month later!
He wanted an army battlefield cake. We purchased army men and vehicles at a discount store. My husband baked the cake in a rectangular pan, and he and I made the buttercream frosting. Coloring the frosting in the two army colors of army green and khaki brownish-green was the most time consuming part of the process.
I used a mix of Wilton gels in leaf green, brown, and black; and although I hadn’t planned on it ahead of time, I found that bit of leftover orange that I had was the key to getting the khaki the right shade.
I took a small amount of the khaki frosting and added a bit more brown, then used this to frost the top of the cake. My son insisted that the cake had to have a trench, so I dug out an oblong hole in the cake and used the extra cake for the road and the hill. There is a stone wall in front of the trench that is not really visible in the picture that was made with chocolate skittles for stones and frosting for mortar.
Even though the wall looked good I do not think I would use the skittles again because they were heavy and fell into the cake. I sprinkled graham cracker crumbs with dark chocolate shavings into the trench and on the wall to look like dirt.
I used mini-marshmallows covered in frosting to make a mound for the mountain. I then covered it with grass on the sides and a road in the middle that merged into the road on the cake. The grass is coconut and cut up mini-marshmallows coated with green frosting.
The road on the cake is a combination of extra cake, graham cracker crumbs, and dark chocolate shavings that were slightly melted. The bushes were cut up mini-marshmallows and coconut mixed with the army green frosting. I frosted the sides of the cake in a camo pattern and piped the bottom and top with army green frosting.
My son also wants a battlefield cake so when looking for pics yours came up and its exactly what I was looking for, it looks great, thanks for the inspiration I needed :)