Vickys Kids Easter / Birthday Farmyard Cake Decoration Instructions

First make the buttercream by mixing the butter and icing sugar together until combined.

Add as much milk as required to loosen the mix so it's spreadable and flavour with a few drops of extract of your choice

Split the buttercrean into 4 equal parts.

Colour one part pink, 1 part yellow and 1 part green

Spread the green buttercream over your base cake, not quite to the edges so it looks like grass over soil.

Let it stand while you ice the cupcakes

Ice 3 cupcakes pink, 3 yellow and 3 with uncoloured buttercream

Go back to the base cake.

Using a fork, flick all over the setting buttercream so it goes a bit spikey to resemble the grass better

Do the same to the yellow cupcakes to make fluffy feathers

Dip the large mallows, sticky side down in the glimmer sugar and press into the middle of each pink and plain cupcake

Push the orange button shaped sweets into the yellow cupcakes to make the beaks and feet of the chicks

Push in the chocolate chips above the noses and beaks to make the animals eyes

Press the halved mini mallows onto the tops of the plain cupcakes stick side down to make the cows ears

For the pigs, pinch the mini mallows to make them into an oval shape and press them in sticky side up

Pipe 2 black dots of writing icing onto the cows snouts to make nostrils.

Do the same to the pigs but use pink

Mix a little cocoa with any leftover plain buttercream and use it to make the splodge markings on the cows faces

On my base cake I used a sugarpaste barn, duck shaped marshmallows and mini chocolate eggs.

It would be another idea to use chenille easter chicks, plastic fences or other toy animals, let your imagination pave the way!