A Kansas Tornado Birthday

My son Finn is fascinated with tornadoes, while at the same time being absolutely terrified of them.  Living in Kansas, he has numerous experiences with severe weather, including tornadoes.  We have been very blessed, however, to never have actually experienced a tornado at our home.  Because of his fascination with tornadoes, he of course requested that I make him a tornado cake for his 9th birthday.  It turned out to be a lot of fun!  As you can see in the photo, it did not have to be a neat, tidy cake; in fact, the messier the better to make the "tornado damage" look more realistic.

The tornado is simply a waffle cone covered with grey icing, which I then stuck inside the cake.  The grass is green icing.  Where the tornado had already left its path, I merely scraped the icing away to reveal the "dirt" (chocolate) cake beneath.  For the fence posts I used pretzel  sticks, which I kept together by dipping the ends in melted chocolate.  I found the idea for the trees here; the only difference was I did not hang them to dry.  I just laid them on wax paper to dry, and they worked fine.  The trees are washed grape stems (with the grapes removed), dipped in chocolate and rolled in green-colored rice krispies for the leaves.  I sprinkled some extra leaves around, made some of the trees fall over, and added a partially destroyed road to finish the tornado destruction.  My son was very excited when he saw his tornado cake!

Happy Birthday, Finn!