Hand-painted birch, and a sunset on the pasture

This one was a joy to make. Two tiers of buttercream painted to look like a birch trunk, and a second cake beside it that could not have been more different.

Painting bark

The cake is ivory buttercream, and everything on it is painted on by hand once that base is smooth: the dark horizontal scars, the knots, the mossy green and gold shading that gives the trunk its depth. Birch is not white — it is white with a hundred marks on it, and it is the marks that make anyone believe it.

Cut into the upper tier is a heart with the couple's initials in it, the way you would find one carved into a real trunk. It is small, and it is the whole reason the cake works.

The colours doing the shouting

Against all that quiet bark go the flowers: a deep burnt orange dahlia, a teal rose, a dusty terracotta rose, cream cosmos, turquoise filler, and tall plumes of pampas grass and dried wheat rising up out of the top. Eucalyptus trails down the side and round the base.

It is a lot of colour, and it works precisely because the cake underneath is doing nothing to compete with it.

And one for the groom

Beside it went a full sheet cake with a sundown scene painted across it — yellow at the top burning down into deep orange, a windmill and a shed in silhouette, and a cow and her calf standing on a dark ridge with the brand marked on her side. The grass is piped in dark green, strand by strand, right across the bottom third, and the border runs yellow along the top edge and green along the bottom to match the sky and the field.

What's inside

Wedding cake was vanilla with vanilla buttercream frosting. The sunset cake was chocolate with vanilla buttercream frosting.

To the happy couple

Wishing you a lifetime of love and happiness.