The Easiest Cake Decorating Job Ever

Aubrey wanted a horse cake for her horse party. The only problem was, though I searched Micheal's, Hobby Lobby, and online, I could not find a horse shaped cake pan. The closest was a horse shoe. Not good enough.

So I had to be creative.

Now I have decorated cakes before in more traditional ways, using the Wilton's bags and tips. And I enjoyed it and thought they turned out fairly well, However, they take hours. And hours and hours. And I just don't always have that kind of time. So here's what I did.

I started off with (my grandmother's recipe for) devil's food chocolate, 9x13 inch cake, flipped onto a serving platter. Then I whipped up a single recipe of Wilton's decorating icing, coloring a little over half green, and the rest of it blue. Then I spread it on like so:
It is supposed to look like a green meadow with a stream running through it. The nice thing about doing it like this is that I didn't even attempt to smooth out the icing, as it supposed to look like rippling water and rolling meadow. (The girls even commented that because the cake was chocolate, it was like eating the dirt under the grass, too!)
Then I washed the horses from a brand new set of Breyer Mini Whinnies that I bought for the occasion. I placed them on the green icing, like they were running around the meadow or drinking from the water. I had also bought some trees that you would use for a diorama or a toy train set. I did put some wax paper under those to keep the needles off the grass. :-)

Finally I wrapped brown thread around toothpicks to make a fence for the backdrop.
The whole thing took less time than I could drive to HEB and order and buy a cake. And all the girls at the party ooood and awwwwwd at it. Aubrey told me several times how much she loved her horse cake. And that's what matters, right?
My point is, you can create fun cakes without taking cake decorating classes and spending hours doing it.