I made this Tractor and Field Birthday Cake by using a basic sponge recipe. The field was 5 eggs, 315g self raising flour, caster sugar and margarine and 155g plain flour and using a 12″ by 8″ cake tin. The tractor was 3 eggs, 175g self raising flour, caster sugar and margarine and using a loaf tin.
Field:
I began by trimming the crust from the cake and cutting the top flat using a serrated knife. I stuck the cake to the board using a little butter icing. I made a quantity for butter icing, 200g margarine and 400g icing sugar. I split the mixture into two parts, colouring one part brown and the other green, I used food colouring paste adding it gradually until I achieved the desired shade. I prefer using these as I find they give the icing a better colour and are less sticky than normal food dyes.
I covered ¾ of the cake in the brown buttericing, ensuring it was spiked up and uneven so that it looked like a muddy field. I used a knife and spoon to do this, making them a little damp to stop the icing sticking too much. I then covered the remaining ¼ of the cake with the green butter icing, smoothing it all over ensuring it was fairly flat. I also tried to blend the two colours at the joins so there was no gaps.
Tractor:
I began by trimming the crust from the cake and cutting out a small section at the back this is to make space for the farmer’s seat. I spread a layer of butter icing over the cake adding some sugar paste to the main body of the tractor to make it more rounded and have more height. Then covered it all in sugar paste which I had dyed blue using food colouring pastes. Trimming the edges and tucking them underneath. I used a cake smoother to smooth out the icing to give it a nice finish.
I dyed some sugar paste black and shaped four wheels from it, two larger for the back and two smaller for the front. I marked on some tire lines all around the wheels and added some silver balls to give more detail. I stuck these on to the tractor using sugar glue. I also added a steering wheel, funnel and grid and lights at the front of the tractor.
I added the tractor’s name to the side, choosing the little boys surname and year he was born for a personal touch, i used a writing pen to do this.
I modeled a farmer to sit on the back of the tractor, a ball shape for the head, sausage shapes for the arms and squashed ball for the body. Then added the features and hair and a hat.
I added the tractor to the field on top of the mud. I modeled a small mouse to sit under the wheel of the tractor, and a pig, sheep, dog and duck. This was all made with sugarpaste, modeling ball shapes, sausage shapes etc and putting it all together with sugar glue.
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