Almost Sweet Enough: Making a Dirt Cake Mountian

My thoughts for Reed's birthday cake was to make one that represented one of his favorite past times, motocross riding. I got on Pinterest and found this site with the most perfect dirt hill cake Spoonful Site. I mean, how much more perfect can you get? I was super excited to surprise Reed with it.

I made a few adjustments to the decorations, feeling like I might be able to make it look better with more candy.

Dirt Bike Cake Recipe

4 (9-inch round) cakes
3 (16-ounce) cans chocolate frosting
7 straws
Oreo cookies, remove the filling and crush
Large Pretzel rods
Chocolate cereal (we used Cocoa Puffs®)
Whoppers
Reeses Pieces
Butterfinger Bite Sized Pieces
Fruit by the Foot®
Thin pretzels
Toy dirt bike and rider

Trim the cake tops flat. Cut 1 cake in half, and cut one third from another cake.
Assemble the cake as shown, frosting between each layer:
Stack the 2 rounds, add the two-thirds section, and insert 3 straws, spacing them about 1-1/2 inches apart. Add 1 cake half (you can save the other for snacking) and insert 2 more straws. Add the cake third and the last 2 straws. Frost the entire cake.
Sprinkle on a cookie dirt trail, then add pretzel rods, cereal, candy, and licorice for log trail borders, rocks, boulders, and plants. Add the rider on top.

I started following the recipe. I decided that and was so excited to start stacking my cake...and then this happened.

The whole thing just collapsed. It was awful! I was depressed. The middle layer fell into itself. How do you fix that? I walked away. I took Reed to the park where Scott and the guys were training. Reed and I watched them for awhile and then we went back home.

I decided to not give up. I went ahead and melted half a can of frosting in the microwave. Doing that allowed me to pour the frosting over the demolished, crumbly cake. Then I added a messy layer of frosting. Thank goodness this was a dirt hill, because the little pieces of cake that came through didn't ruin the overall cake concept.

Once I had all the frosting down, I just went for it and started adding the rocks, the path and the plants. I just kept adding more and more and the more I added the better it looked, at least to me. It was a mess and it was "dirty" but it seemed to work. I cut up the green pieces of the fruit leather and it made the best contrast of little grass coming through. So, after running out of "rocks", I stepped back.