Dad's 75th Golf Birthday Cake

My Dad loves to golf!  For his 75th birthday I decided I would make him a golf cake.  There are so many great ideas out there.  I wanted the cake to look like a golf green.  I baked a double layer chocolate cake with rich buttercream frosting as the filling.  Dad loves chocolate so it is a perfect filler for him!The rich chocolate buttercream recipe is from The Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook.  It is very rich and should be classed as a dessert all by itself - it is so yummy!  I have the recipe at the end of this post.

I made a double batch of buttercream frosting and colored it green.  I used wilton green, wilton blue and americolor forest green.  Getting the green I wanted was probably the hardest part.  I kept adding more and more coloring.  The frosting was looking very minty so I added some blue which made it darker like I imagined a golf course would look.

I frosted the entire cake in the buttercream.  Drew outlines for my golf green, water hazard and sand trap.  The rest of the top of the cake I frosted using tip 233 to make it look like grass.  I liked doing this because it hid the buttercream and so that didn't have to be completely smooth.

I wanted the cake to have a water hazard and sand trap.  For the water hazard I used piping gel.  I colored it blue and frosted underneath it with white so the blue would show thru.  Looking at it now I wish I had made it a darker blue - maybe next time.  I used my mortar and pestle to crush graham crackers to use for the sand trap.  I had to travel with the cake and I didn't add the graham crackers until we got to our destination.  I didn't want them to soak into the buttercream.

I also have somewhat of a scrapbooking addiction and I used my Cricut machine to cut out the flag and 75 for the golf flag.  I used a wooden dowl for the flag pole and voila - I was done!!  I think Dad enjoyed it :)

Rich Chocolate Buttercream

2 (1 Ounce) squares unsweetened chocolate
2 (1 Ounce) squares semisweet chocolate
1 cup butter, softened
4 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1/4 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract


- Melt chocolate
- Beat Butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy.  Add chocolate, powdered sugar, and remaining ingredients.  Beat until spreading consistency.