Family Tree

My mother asked me to bake a cake and decorate it for a family get-together over the weekend. Because I am not a professional cake decorator I needed to find a simple way to make a cake that was presentable to my entire family. Early last week I decided since the cake was supposed to represent my entire family I would do a family tree.

While discussing it with my daughter she had the wonderful idea to make cupcakes instead of a sheet cake...so much easier! We had decided to cut out gum paste leaves for each cupcake and write everyone's name on them.

When we explained our idea to my creative husband he had the amazing idea to make apples instead of leaves which turned out looking so much prettier against the green cupcakes.

My younger sons joined in to help make cupcakes and cut out apples. This project turned out to be a family project that I enjoyed very much.

We baked 96 cupcakes (we had to have extras for snacking and those many accidents). We also cut out and decorated 40 apples (a few of these didn't make the trip).

The apples are made from tinted gum paste that we rolled out and used a cookie cutter. Apple shaped cookie cutters are hard to find so I reshaped a heart-shaped cutter. The little leaves are also gum paste. I used chocolate frosting to make the stem and it was a great glue for attaching the leaves.

The trunk of the tree is chocolate cake. Each of the cupcakes in the tree was frosted green and then I used a leaf tip to decorate with small leaves before putting the apples on top. The "grass cupcakes" were frosted green and then I used a grass tip.

Such a simple cake was a big hit with our extended family. And so much fun for my immediate family to work together.

 It would be a cute cake for a classroom as well.

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