7/30/12

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.

This post does contain affiliate links and I may be compensated for any purchases but I only post products that I have used.



17 comments:

  1. What a wonderful idea for a reunion, family gathering or a grandparent's birthday. So sweet. You did a great job=)

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  2. Replies
    1. For my family I would need to discolor cause we have a few bad apples! LOL!

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  3. I absolutely LOVE this!! So creative! :)

    Brenda @ChattingOverChocolate.blogspot.com

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  4. What a wonderful and meaningful project to work on together as a family! It looks like it was a lot of fun and it is such a creative idea!

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  5. Okay this is BEYOND darling! This would be so fun to serve at a family reunion or we do a family night each week and it would be such a fun thing to do all together! Thanks for sharing!!

    Shannon
    ikneadtobake.blogspot.com

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  6. Great idea! LOVE IT....
    Jodie from www.jodiefitz.com

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  7. That tree is adorable. So glad I found you on the pin it party.
    Leslie
    www.thememorynest.blogspot.com

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  8. What a great cake! No wonder your mom asked you to pull something together. Very creative and cute.

    Thank you so much for sharing this at the Oh HAPPY Day party!

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  9. I've never seen anything like it, this is great!

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  10. This is such a cute and creative idea and concept! I love, love, love it! How big of a board did you have to use to fit all those cupcakes on there?

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  11. I kind of feel like I'm super late. Hope you get this since no one has commented in 8 years. I was looking for something like this. Im a baker, but I would have to do this alone, so I'm having the local bakery do my cupcakes. The thing is, they don't do anything like this nor would they just do the tree trunk. So I was thinking I'd just do a small sheet cake because i want a picture on the trunk. Stumbled upon yours and I see where yours is a cake. Now I know it can really be done.

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