Grinch Christmas Tree Cake

Today I am showing you how to make a Grinch Christmas Tree Cake based off of the hit movie and story, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

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Making this gravity defying cake is actually super easy! It looks difficult, but nope, I show you how easy it actually is! One thing I want to talk about before getting into the cake though is that the actually tree in the Grinch movie(s) looks nothing like this! But, both Paul and I didn’t recognize the “real” Grinch tree, we associated this leaning one to the story. So making a decision, I went with this leaning version as the Grinch version I wanted to show you. The two of us could never be wrong, right?

To create the gravity defying top, I went with Styrofoam, after I tried rice krispies treats. I determined RKT were too heavy to stack and lean in the way that I needed them to, and they ripped the dowel through the cake. So styrofoam it was! Working with it is a lot easier for beginner cake decorators and for people who don’t have a lot of time to mess around . . . like me!

I love piping projects like this. You could use fondant if you prefer for each of the pieces of the tree (What are those pieces called anyway? They’re not branches, not leaves, not twigs, not needles….LOL) To pipe the tree, I used a Leaf tip (Wilton 366). In order for the shape of each leaf to stay distinguished, ensure to use a stiff/thick buttercream.  The buttercream will heat up in your hand as you are holding the bag, and this will cause the icing to soften. When this happened, I emptied the melted portion of buttercream into a container, and then filled the bag up again with fresh/hard buttercream and started piping again. You can reuse the softened buttercream- just pop it into the fridge first.

The cake on it’s own is definitely awesome to look at, but the cake board seemed a bit naked to me, so I added some chocolate presents that I had for another project, some Christmas candy, and a Whoville sign!

Grinch Christmas Tree Cake

Ingredients and Materials:
• 4 x 6″ round vanilla cakes colored lime green
• Green buttercream (20 drops green, 5 yellow, 5 brown)
• Styrofoam cones
• Green, red, white, silver round candies

Procedure:
1. Attach one 6″ round cake to cake board with a dab of buttercream. Cut the second cake using a 5.25″ cutter, the third with a 4.5″ cutter, and the forth with a 3.75″ cutter. Stack cakes and layer with buttercream.
2. Trim a small amount off of the top edge of each layer so that the cake layers slope gradually to the top. Place stacked cake in the freezer.
3. Cut Styrofoam cone into 3 pieces. Trim off a section of each bottom and angle them to droop. Secure with toothpicks or crazy glue. Wrap cone in plastic wrap.
4. Remove cake from the freezer and place the drooping cone on top of the cake. Secure cone to the cake with a large skewer, pressing it all the way down into the cake board below.
5. Cover the cake entirely in a thin layer of green buttercream.
6. Place remaining buttercream into a piping bag fitted with a leaf tip (#366) and cover the entire cake in leaves.
7. Place candies on the cake where desired.
8. To add elements to the cake board, add present chocolates and a “Whoville” sign made from gum paste. Attach the sign to a peppermint stick. Use a ball of fondant to attach the sign to the cake board.
9. Slice and serve cake when desired. Cake should be kept in a sealed container in the fridge and consumed within 2-3 days.

 A few years ago I made Grinch Cupcakes so check those out here: