John Deere Green Tractor Cake + Hay Bale Cupcakes

Update:  If you want to make a cake like this, I've posted a step-by-step photo tutorial on How to Make a Tractor Cake here.

Today I planned to share with you my  nephew's John Deere Green Tractor Cake + Hay Bale Cupcakes. I actually planned to share it much earlier today, but my plans were derailed.

You see, last night, my laptop was infected with a virus and within minutes, it stopped working. I know, I know... you probably don't believe me. I am always having one problem or another with my laptop.

Today it's a virus.  A few weeks ago, it was a liquid spill. Before that there were internet connectivity problems out here in the sticks and before that ... another liquid spill.

It wasn't a virus afterall - it was a hard drive failure... or a software on the hard drive failure... or some business like that. Whatever. It was broken and I had to wait for Dell to fix it. Sheesh - I have the worst luck with computers!!

It's the 6 kids... I blame them.

Anyway, once again I'm kicking it old-style on my beat up old computer. I'm thankful that I have this old computer as a back-up (yes, that will be on my gifts list this week), but it sure does put a kink in the way I do things!

I just have to say, thanks to Carbonite, an external hard-drive and a brilliant 15 year old son - *almost* everything was backed up and I don't think I lost many, if any, of my files. It just took a little wrangling to get them over to this old beater computer.

But again, thanks to all of that - here are more pictures of the John Deere Green Tractor Cake and Hay Bale Cupcakes. My brother's little boy Tucker was celebrating his second birthday!

You can see his cowboy cake from last year here--->>>  Tucker's Cowboy Cake with Jeans, Banana & Hat!

First up... the tractor. This was all cake. I used the alphabet pan to bake some 4"x6" rectangles then I stacked those up for the base of the tractor and cut one in half and double stacked it for the cab.

It was covered in green and yellow homemade marshmallow fondant and I used Satin Ice black fondant for all of the black accents.

For the tires... they're donuts! Yep.. the large back tires are old fashioned cake donuts and the smaller front tires are chocolate covered donuts. I used a round cookie cutter to cut out a circle of black fondant a couple of inches larger than the donuts, then wrapped it around to cover the "tire".

I used a gum paste tool to mark the tread lines and added the yellow circles for extra details! SUPER EASY!!

The dirt was brownish-black buttercream with crushed Oreos all over it!

The bottom cake was 2 layers of 9" round cakes. They were covered and filled with green vanilla buttercream filling. I used my FMM Ribbon cutter for the fence pieces then used a Wood Grain Impression Mat to detail them.

For the hay on the cake, I used my extruder.

Then there were the hay cupcakes. I piped on a circle of yellow buttercream, then used my grass tip to pile on the hay! They were very easy but I loved the way they "matched" the cake.

And that's it!

Do you have any questions about this cake or the cupcakes? Please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll help if I can! And don't forget, I've posted a step-by-step photo tutorial on How to Make a Tractor Cake here.

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