A Garden Birthday Cake

I've gotten tons of great feedback on this birthday cake I made for a friend. I wasn't planning on blogging on it, so I didn't take any pictures of the process. All I've got is the finished product.

So, I'll tell you about what I did. This was made with half a loaf pan of chocolate cake frosted with chocolate buttercream. Ours is vegan, but doesn't need to be for this recipe. It was then covered with leaf green fondant. I didn't worry about perfect edges because gardens aren't perfectly straight in general. I then made the roses out of pink fondant. They were surprisingly easy to make. I used the back of a piping tip to cut out a dozen or so little circles. I then made a small cone in the center and used my ball fondant tool to smooth down one side of the circles and make them more petal like. Then I wrapped them around the cone one at a time until it was as big as I wanted it to be. Then I used my daisy fondant cutter to cut out yellow fondant daisies and a round piping tip to cut out the black centers and stuck them on with edible glue and a paintbrush. The orange flowers were cut out with a stylized flower cutter and the petals were thinned out using my ball fondant tool. Same technique for the black centers as the daisies. Then I cut out a handful of the smallest flower cutout I have in all three colors to add more color around the cake. I cut out a handful of green leaves from the leftover green fondant and placed them sporadically around to give it a hint of dimension and bring it all together. I love the way it turned out and assures me that fondant roses are not beyond my reach.