Introduction: Cactus Cakes for People That Haven't Decorated Cakes Before

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These are my cactus cakes I made for my birthday, as you can probably guess from the title, I don't decorate cakes very often and when I do it's just sticking chocolate buttons in icing.

Since no one else on instructables seems to have made any cactus cakes i can copy, this is what i've made.

For anyone else who loves cactuses and chocolate cake...

Step 1: Mixture

Ingredients:
•200g butter
•200g sugar
•200g flour
•4 eggs
•cocoa powder
•bar of chocolate
•paper cake cases

This part is easy. Feel free to skip it and make your own chocolate cakes (or any other kind of cake, i just thought chocolate would look like the soil).

Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Cream together the butter and sugar in a bowl. Whisk in the eggs and then slowly stir the flour and cocoa powder in. Leave the mixer going for a while until its completely smooth and the colour is equal.

Meanwhile, get a bar of chocolate and smash it up with the end of a rolling pin, then carefully open it and stir in the chocolate chips with a spoon. (I suppose you could just buy chocolate chips, but this is more fun)

Give the whisk to a nearby child.

Step 2: Baking

This hardly counts as a step but u couldn't fit all the pictures in the last step.

Spoon the mixture into cake cases.

Put in pre-heated oven for 25minutes (clearly i was a bit slow taking the picture)

Take out and leave to cool down.

Step 3: Tall Cactus

I found these as the hardest kind.

Ingredients:
•2 cakes
•sugar (or wafer) flowers
•rollable icing (if you're any good at this, you could make some or if you're lazy like me then just buy it.
•green food colouring
•jam
•sugar •sprinkles

Cut a cylinder shape out of one of the cakes and stick it onto the other one with jam. Then mix the icing with the green food colouring and cover the cactus, then draw lines in it with a cocktail stick. I used sugar strands sprinkles to make the spikes for mine and it took ages, so it would be great to hear if anyone has any better ideas.o

I will admit that I made some with a roll of white icing in the middle instead of cake because it was easier and neater, but no one really likes the icing that much so the cake ones taste nicer, it depends whether you're more worried about them being neat. Or you could do a mixture like me and try our both ways.

Step 4: Succelents

Theres a lot of different kinds of succulents, but they all look kind of similar so I did them all in the same way

Ingredients:
•1 cake
•rollable icing
•green food colouring
•jam

First spread the cake with jam to stick the icing on with. Then cut 5 points shapes that point to 1/5 of a circle and cut the other side to the shape that you want. As you can see in the picture i did one pointy one and one round one.

Next put another smaller blob of jam in the middle and do the exact same again but with smaller leaves. For the pointy one I did another layer and also an extra spike going straight upwards.

Step 5: Round Cactus

Not hard, but it does take ages to put all the spikes in though.

Ingredients:
•2 cakes (you don't exactly need a whole new cake for this by the way, you can use pieces you have left from other ones)
•jam
•rollable icing
•green food colouring
•sugar sprinkles
•flower (option)

Spread the cake with jam and stick on extra pieces to make it a round shape. Then cut a circle out of the green icing and use it to cover the cake. The slowest part is sticking on the spikes all over, and then finish it by putting a flower on the top.

Step 6: Butter Icing Cactus

This is a good one because its easier to do and the icing tastes better as well.

Ingredients:
•soft butter
•icing sugar
•milk
•green food colouring
•greaseproof paper
•tape
•1 or 2 cakes

There is an option with this whether you want to just decorate a flat cake or build it up with more cake like the other ones.

Whisk together the butter and icing sugar (sorry there are no exact measurements, just until its a good thickness. Put in a splurt of milk if its too thick. Then mix green food colouring and taste a bit to check its good. (Wash the spoon though)

Make a point with greaseproof paper and tape it in half, put a couple of spoons of the icing inside then cut off the end to make a piping bag. Obviously if you have a real one you can use that but considering i called this instructable "for people that haven't decorated cakes before" then its likely you don't. I only have a fabric one and I don't like it because the icing eeps through the stitches in the side.

And now this is the easy bit, just squeeze it a tiny bit so you can see the icing peeking out the end, then touch it to the cake and pull it away to make a spike. Repeat this over the whole cake and you're done.

Step 7: Done

These were the main ways that I made my cactuses, but there were some mixtures that I made up between them, for example some are made with a middle like the tall cactus but butter icing spikes, and thats what I also did with the ball cactuses you can see in the picture.

Another option with tall cactuses is to put arms on them. Just mold a cylinder out of icing and bend it then stick it on while the icings still wet.

Thankyou for reading I hope it was helpful :)
Enjoy your cactus cakes mine were very delicious :)