Fake Cake to Scent Your Home

A Pet Rose Bush

Although allposters attributes this painting to Corot, I think there has been a mistake made, for it obviously is by the American artist Daniel Ridgeway Knight.

I have had quite a few requests over the years for a tutorial to make this decorative scented fake-cake, which is similar to ones sold in home interior type catalogs for hefty prices.   I have been trying for a long time to make one of these and get it posted. I am entering this tutorial in  Beverly's Pink Saturday .

 All the ingredients  that you see in the picture below are available at Dollar Tree stores.  The styrofoam rounds are essential for this craft, and I would strongly recommend using some from Michaels or JoAnns or WalMart floral department, rather than the Dollar Store brand, which is very difficult to cut. However, if you have an electric knife or some kind of cutting tool, it might be easy to cut the cheaper styrofoam. I have used the Dollar Store styrofoam here and was able to cut it with a table knife or serrated edge cake spatula.

You'll need a hot glue gun with plenty of glue sticks, round styrofoam for the cake layers and a few stems of fake flowers and berries, all available at the dollar store, or just use supplies you already have.  This project is best left to those who are adept at using hot glue and is not for children.  You will need a stem of about 7 large roses and a stem of small roses or flowers, as well as some of the berries that you see in the photo.

If using the dollar store styrofoam, you'll need two packages of round styrofoam, and each package contains two rounds.  If using a higher quality brand, just use three round styrofoam pieces. For a quick and easy project, choose the smallest size you can find. This one that I am making took one stem of flowers, which contained about 7 roses. The total cost for the flowers and styrofoam was about 6 dollars.  

Before attempting this, please read through the directions to see if you really want to take the time to do it. It took me about 3 hours, but I was photographing the steps as I went.

On a piece of paper, trace around the styrofoam shape:

Cut out the paper circle.

Fold the circle in half,

and in half again.

Open the circle and cut out one of the four sections.

Lay the larger paper circle on top of the styrofoam round, and draw with pen or pencil, the fourth section that has been cut out, digging into the styrofaom with the pen.

With the hot glue gun, glue all the styrofoam layers together, using just a few drops here and there on each layer.

With a table knife that has a serrated edge, cut out the slice, following the lines you have drawn. Put the small piece aside, because you will be using this later to make a single slice of scented cake.

Pull some small roses off the stems but do not remove any of the plastic pieces from the flowers, because you will need them to stick firmly in the styrofoam.

Hot glue a strip of the plastic berries in the middle, for the "filling' and dab some glue on the other sections. Put the white roses into the styrofoam and the glue on both sides, as you see here:

Pull the roses off the stems and remove all the plastic joins. Then clip the petals off.

Hot glue the largest petals on to the lower part of the cake, overlapping them and letting the tips fall a little below the edge.

Hot glue another row of petals, overlapping the lower row, and overlapping the other petals as you glue them around. Position the petals to come above the top of the cake a little.

Hot-glue large petals on the top of the cake in a circle, overlapping and overhanging,  starting new rows until it is completely covered.

This is what it should look like, but there can be many ways of doing this. If you have very curly petals, try gluing them all over without bothering to put them in rows, for a different look. Or, you could just leave the plastic pieces on the flowers and push them directly into the styrofoam, along with hot glue. I have seen some of these cakes in home interior shops, with the leaves up the sides for "icing."

Now turn the cake upside down to show the bare styrofoam underneath, and hot-glue the leaves that were on the rose stem, shiny side down, all over.  Be sure to remove the little plastic fittings first. Let the leaves over-lap and stick out beyond the cake base.

It will look something like this.

Take two of the leaf groupings and hot-glue them to the top of the cake,

adding two or three of the smaller roses from the inside of the cake, and some of the berries.

I hope you did not throw away that little wedge you cut out, because now you can make a scented slice to go with your cake. Cut that wedge in half, as you see above,

and set it on a flat side.  Glue berries to the middle, trimming with scissors to fit.

Add hot glue on both sides of the middle and stick the  miniature white roses into the stryrofoam.

Now cover the rounded side with some of the left over, smaller petals from the rose stem, making sure they reach over the edges,  and add some green leaves to the end, like you did on the cake. 

If you want to scent your cake, you can spray it with vanilla perfume or cologne, or get scented oils at the dollar store which work really well on this cake and give off a pleasant scent for a long time.

Use a dropper or pour the scented oil from the bottle onto a section on top of the cake. Find a loose petal and lift it up to get the scent on to the styrofoam, and also tip the cake on its side and add scent to the filling.

Display it with a few spilled berries or flower "filling"  to make it look like a yummy, gooey slice of cake. To make a gift of it, glue the cake and slice on its own fancy paper plate, or use a plate from the thrift store.

If you do not have styrofoam, this could possibly be made with other materials. It is possible to make this by using a round box with lid, as the base, but it would not have a slice. The round box still makes an attractive centerpiece, though, and looks great on a mantel or entry table, but keep out of reach of small children. It looks great behind the glass doors of a china cabinet, on a pedestal cake plate.

Fake food like this is used for display in historic tour-homes and other places. This might be something worth making for someone's Etsy store and it certainly is nice to look at.

Try  another kind of fake cake here.