Climb Every Mountain

You know those people who you love real real hard? One of mine is getting married and she's letting me make the groom's cake. The groom wants a German chocolate mountain cake to serve about 140.

Here's why I was nervous: You know that gooey coconut pecan stuff that goes on German chocolate cake? That stuff seems too slippery for a large, mountainous, stacked cake.

Once again, it was Mr. Cakeapotamus to the rescue. He built me another cake stand- this one was a manly round wooden base with a tall pvc pipe sticking up around which I could build the cake. Perfect.

So I baked and baked and baked. 30 eggs later, I had a bunch of cakes. I poked holes in the middles and stacked with with that gooey stuff in between each layer:

I let it sit for a while with heavy bags of sugar on top. That's how the cracks happened. But it was good because there was no settling or sinking after it was decorated.

Next came the waterfall:

That's just plain buttercream. I had an idea... what if I mixed green buttercream with the coconut goo and used it to cover the rest of the cake? Let's find out:

Cool. Very rugged and mountainous.

What if I make some green royal icing, skewer a marshmallow, and pipe the icing onto the marshmallow to make trees?

Hmmm... let's airbrush this thing and add a little more green foliage:

Some marbled fondant rocks and we're done:

Now I just have to get the thing to Birmingham...