Engagement Stump Cake for Rachel and David

I guess 'the' engagement celebration of each of my children will be with a "stump" cake!  We were able to celebrate together with Rachel's parents and sister a week and a half after the official proposal.  These first three pictures were taken by Rachel's sister Caitlyn Warner - an amazing photographer!!  

David and Rachel

Full Picture of the stump cake - picture taken by Caitlyn Warner

 David asked for a triple chocolate cake with triple chocolate frosting and the filling is rich chocolate gnache.

 The flowers are gumpaste

Yummm...

We even made the roots of the tree come out.

 I love making wooden planks and trees and any kind of wooden objects.  This was simply put on with tip 789 then dragging a knife over it to make the bark look more natural and gnarled. 

Gumpaste flowers w/ buttercream leaves, stems and grass!

Gumpaste Flowers climbing up the stump!

Close up of the frosting bark.

 So rich and FATTENING!!  but so worth it!!

Cow Cake - Happy Birthday Rachel!

My sweet daughter-in-law-to-be had a birthday in April.  Rachel loves cows, so Joy and I had a fun time planning and making this one!!  We started by making fence posts and flowers out of gumpaste

Joy had the neat idea to do a marble cake so that even the inside of the cake had cow spots!!

I made the cows by hand with fondant using instructions online with the Lucy Cow... 

 I tweeked it to make a manly looking bull for David! 

 The top of the cake was blue so we did the writing and the clouds in white...

 I don't think I got a picture of the cake as a whole... like duh, but...  

 You can see by putting all the pictures together what it looked like!

 Aren't they cute? 

 Thanks for looking!!