Okay, a woman contacted me about doing a 40th bday cake for her husband who is a big deer hunter. She wanted something that was funny with this theme of hunting. So, after looking around a cakes here on cc I've decided on a design but have never done anything like it before.

I'm thinking of a 2 layer 10" square with a corner cut out that will house a 3, maybe 4, tiered 6-4" round cake that will be made to look like a tree. On the corner where it comes out of the square cake I will do roots and grass, etc. I've never scultpted any cakes or made a tree before.

Then, leaning on the tree a hunter squatting do his "business" with the toilet paper hanging off a small branch. I have the Aine2 tutorials on making characters but have not yet made any.

The customer then thinks it would be great! if I could have a deer standing there with a gun pointed at the pooping hunter. AHHHHH! I can visualize all of this and I think the idea is great but this seems to me more like design of a more experienced decorator. If anyone has any ideas on how to best acheive this overall look I would be ever so grateful!

It sounds like a really cute idea. You could make the figures ahead of time, so that you'd be able to tell your customer ahead of time if it wasn't going to work. The deer sounds kind of hard to do...they're so thin-legged and graceful. I think you might need to build the figures on wire instead of toothpicks or spaghetti noodles, and just tell the customer that they were not edible at all (she probably would want to save them anyhow). For the tree, maybe instead of a tower of cake, you should try a few pretzel rods wrapped together in brown fondant. You could stick a couple of marshmallows on the top and then build your tree leaves on them. The fondant-wrapped pretzel rods could be pushed down into the cake for the corner that you're talking about. Making some rocks out of fondant would be neat too, and you could have the roots wrap over the rocks. The only reason I was thinking of pretzel rods instead of a stack of cakes is that you need a certain amount of height for the width of the tree to seem possible. Also, the figures of the man and the deer will take up a lot of space on top of the cake, so it might work better if the tree had a smaller base.

Anyhow, it sounds like an awesome idea! You'll have to post a picture of it when it's done

Wow what an idea!

I like the idea, but I think the deer might be a bit harder to accomplish-probably not for some here on cc, however! Take out the deer- maybe do the tree in RKT over a framework of some sort, covered with fondant, and I could see myself trying to accomplish it....

You know your own skill level- if your are comfortable stretching yourself, I'd say go for it. But if you feel it is over your head, you need to speak to the client and compromise for a design that you can be confident in doing well.

okay, good points guys. although not having done it before, i feel like i could do the figure because the cake is not until may and i would have plenty of time to work on it. i'm not feeling the whole deer thing so i need to try and come up with another idea for her maybe.

okay, so one more question with regards to this cake. there will be 40 people at this party and with the extra modelling work and such, how should i charge for this?? i normally charge $2.50 per serv. for bc but i've not done this much extra stuff before. i need to give her a quote so i would really appreciate feedback on the price!!!

just trying to give myself a little bump on this