Butterfly Cake

I had this idea to do this really cute cake where it looks like a kid's drawing: there's green frosting at the bottom (for the grass) and blue everywhere else (for the sky). Then I would make flower clusters on the grass and butterflies on the sky and it would be soooo cute........

Reality: I baked my cake in the morning but didn't decorate it. Then I ran errands and by the time I got back I had less that two hours before I (and my cake) had to be at our event.

You might have guessed that the cake didn't turn out QUITE as I'd imagined it. But.... In my own humble opinion, it still turned out pretty cute! :)

See? Cute!

What I did:

Cake:

I was super unimpressive and bought a box mix and made it. But it was devil's food cake! So yum! :)

Frosting:

1 c butter

1 t vanilla

1 t almond flavoring

Powdered sugar until taste and consistency are right in your own eyes

Little milk if needed 

As you may have noticed, frosting making is not an exact science in my book. I made my frosting as per above recipe and then added food coloring until I liked the color. (I have some of the "neon" food dye and I really like the colors they give!) 

Apologies for those of you who like pictures: I didn't take any pictures of the creating process because I was feeling a little rushed.

Butterflies:

(I actually made the butterflies before the frosting so they could set)

10 pretzel twist

3 pretzel sticks

Almond Bark

I actually made more butterflies than are on the cake but the above recipe is just for the butterflies on the cake.

I melted the almond bark in three separate bowls and colored each one to my liking. The butterflies are made by coating two pretzel twists and laying them side by side (refer to picture), then taking half a pretzel stick and coating it and laying it down the middle. The butterflies should be set in about fifteen to twenty minutes. 

Process:

My cake baked nice and puffy so I had to level it, which made it crumby. I don't like working with crumb coat so I actually melted more almond bark and spread that over the top and let it set. That gave me a VERY good base for frosting! (however, when I cut the cake later the almond bark cracked and gave a weird consistency if you weren't expecting it). I left a little bit of my frosting out before coloring it and put it in a sandwich baggie. After frosting the cake, I placed the butterflies where I wanted them and took my baggie of icing (I had snipped a TINY hole in the corner of the baggie) and created little flight paths for my butterflies. This gave the cake a great finishing touch! 

Butterflies and flight paths!