Tee Time Cake

Dad will drop his driver and grab a fork when you present him with this well-manicured golf course cake. And this time, he may even aim for a sand trap.

Ingredients

1 cooled 9- by 13-inch sheet cake
green frosting
white frosting
blue decorators' gel
light brown sugar
1 cup of shredded coconut
6 drops of green food coloring

chopsticks
spearmint candy leaves
pretzel sticks
1 piece of paper
green decorating sugar
3-inch strip of fruit leather
mini jawbreaker or white Tic Tac or jelly bean

Instructions

Bake and cool a 9- by 13-inch sheet cake. Dig out 3 shallow trenches (for the sand traps and pond) near the edges, as shown.
Cover the rest of the cake with grassy green frosting, but coat the trenches with plain white frosting. For the pond, top the white frosting with blue decorators' gel, spreading it with a rubber spatula or the back of a spoon.
Coat the sand traps with a layer of light brown sugar, packing it firmly to give them depth.
To make the rough, combine 1 cup of shredded coconut and 6 drops of green food coloring in a small covered container and shake it well. Sprinkle the coconut around the edges of the cake, avoiding the fairway.
For each tree, use a chopstick to poke a hole in the bottom of a spearmint candy leaf, insert a pretzel stick, and plant it in the cake as you see fit.
For a neat putting green, cut a 3-inch circular hole in a piece of paper or cardboard, then lay the stencil on the fairway and fill the circle with green decorating sugar.
To make the flag, wrap a 3-inch strip of fruit leather around a pretzel stick, pressing together the ends. Trim it into a pennant and set it on the green.
Finally, add a mini jawbreaker (or push a white Tic Tac or jelly bean into the turf) for a golf ball. Fore!