Taylor's Horse Cake

I just got home a little while ago from delivering a birthday cake. I am friends on facebook with Josh's cousin, Christy. She saw the link to my blog post about the Uga cake we did back in May and asked if I was interested in doing her daughter's birthday cake in August. I said "Sure!"

Well, August came and I wondered if I'd hear from Christy about doing that cake. We didn't get too far into the month before she wrote me on facebook and asked if I was still interested. I was so glad to hear that she still wanted me to do it! I love making cakes!

She told me that Taylor had just started taking horseback riding lessons and wanted a horse cake. That was pretty much all the direction she gave me, which is a good thing. Mama and I have always agreed that when people let you do what you think is best it turns out better. She loves it when someone just orders a cake, no description of what it should look like. She then gets to be creative and have fun with it. When you're told to work with colors you don't neccesarily love or to make things you're not familiar with, it can be a hinderance.

I immediately knew what I was going to do for Taylor's cake, and I got to work. I made horses, flowers and a fence out of gumpaste. I started on all that Tuesday or Wednesday. Gumpaste things can (and should) be made well in advance and keep very well. I made the cake and crumb-coated it Thursday. I wanted to just go ahead and do it all that day; I couldn't wait to decorate it! But, I had to wait, because it wouldn't be good for the decorated cake to sit there for a couple days. Finally, I got to start on it this morning. It took me all day because of a few set-backs that made me thankful that I started at 7:30 this morning.

Oh, but what a fun day. I just love doing this. It is so much fun to me, and I am so proud of the finished product once it's done.

Here are some pictures of the completed cake:




I decided to make all four horses different. There was a grey one with white spots,


a white one,

a brown one with white spots,

and a brownish red one that was meant to look like the horse Taylor rides, named Lady.

They did actually have legs. I'm realizing as I'm looking back over this that all of their legs are covered up by the fence posts. Here, how about this:

You can kind of see them there. I have better photos of them, but blogger is loving turning them sideways, so this is the best I can do for now.

I went over the fence with a light coat of royal icing to give it more support and a white-washed look and added all the little flowers to give it the girly look it needed.

I was very happy with the way it turned out, and I think Taylor was pretty excited about it too.

As Mama always says, "it's a labor of love!"

Oh, and I had a little batter left over. Hmm... I wonder what I did with that...