Large and weighing a ton, this is a vanilla chocolate chip cake for a special young man for his birthday. He loves the 1940’s classic cartoon character Woody Woodpecker, which is a delight for a child in this day and age growing up on amazingly realistic animation, CGI and Playstation. I was given a picture of a cake made to look like a tree stump with a candle in the shape of Woody Woodpecker sitting in the middle of it and various little fondant creatures around it. Here is my take on the request: instead of covering it in fondant I chose to make a chocolate collar and roughened it up to look like bark. I then dusted and hand painted the cake to give it a bit of sheen and depth. I spent a few days making a fondant Woody figure to plonk in the middle of the cake. Woody took me forever to figure out as I couldn’t find a tutorial or any ideas on how to make him, so I took the time to model him from cartoon pictures I found and videos of the show I watched to familiarise myself with his dimensions. He is also hand painted. The rest of the cake has various colourful little creatures like snails, worms, friendly snakes, lady bugs and caterpillars all to add some character to the overall look. I had a lot of fun making this one, very good distraction for me while I recover from surgery. Hope you like it :)