October 2013: This project was one of those that continued to morph well beyond my initial plan, even as I was putting it all together the last day. I knew I wanted a gum ball tree with a swing, and I knew I wanted a chocolate waterfall that created a chocolate lake. The mountain and tree are molded from Rice-Krispies Treats mixture. Once it hardened, I covered everything in fondant. Originally, my plan was to create the colorful walking path and intersperse the individual cupcakes on the white areas. But then….I decided that I didn’t want just the white background for my cupcakes, so I thought I would find a way to make the base green, like grass. I decided on crushed up green candies, but since I had to buy bags of multicolored candies, my idea morphed into a much more psychedelic experience than I had planned.Here’s a not so great photo of my all edible Candyland. I had a hard time trying to get the best angle to capture it all.All of the candies & treats on the cupcakes are made of fondant.I decided to add a mermaid diving into the chocolate lake. Her tail is adorned with slivers of jellybeans, and the splash is made of hardened chocolate.The chocolate bars are made of fondant and stamped with my daughter’s initials. I did re-use a Ghirardelli chocolate bar wrapper to wrap my fake bars.The gum balls are real gum balls. Originally, I was going to make all of the gum balls out of fondant, but I decided that real gum balls would be way more visually appealing and exciting. I also had planned to make a fondant person sitting on the swing, but my daughter thought it would better if we used the playing pieces from the Candyland game to really hammer the theme home.
