Cake topping that looks like sand/ pale earth?

[Closetlibrarian]

I'm making a birthday cake (for DD) and a section of it needs to be decorated to look like sandy earth (so, pale golden-brown in colour). I'm not using fondant/ rolled icing and don't want to use buttercream for this either.
I was thinking I could get some honeycomb and bash that into small pieces and sprinkle it on top (there will be icing for the decoration to stick to). But that's a bit too orangey-yellow in colour and would blend in too much, I think, to the section next to this one (which is going to be piped orange buttercream flowers/stars). Any other ideas? Do sprinkles come in a pale brown colour??

Digestives?

Ground almonds?

Digestives are ideal as are rich tea x

I was going to say crushed digestives too...

This was on Bake Off recently - ground almonds.

Golden caster sugar?

Whizzed up digestive biscuits, definitely. Add a little bit of extra sugar if you want the sand sweeter. That's what I used for DS2's dinosaur cake, anyhow

If you want to avoid using nuts (because ground almonds would look good) then how about either crushed biscuits or a fine crumble mix (butter, flour, sugar rubbed together),which would be tasty too!

You're all brilliant! Why didn't I think of bashed-up digestives. Perfect. Thanks :)

DD ground up those yummy lotus biscuits for a ver convincing golf course bunker :)

Photos!

That’s brilliant!