The finished birthday cake

Hi Everyone,

I took the day off and decorated my husband's birthday cake. Here's the final product. The verdict from my husband is that it's a little too girly and if I had gone with a green icing for the background instead of the yellow then it might have been man enough for him. Having said that, he's OK with it and happy that I'm proud of it and will be very content to eat it over the next several days.

I like it, but it's a bit too symmetrical for my tastes and to do it again I'd do the roses differently.

I was kept company by a couple of wonderful girlfriends and the cake went together very smoothly. Wine took away most of my rest tremor and the roses weren't too bad to make. I am loving the paper towel method of smoothing the buttercream icing - I wish I had discovered it years ago.

I think this is one of the easiest cakes I've ever done - other than tinting a whack of icing the wrong colour of yellow, which will be used for something else, there were no major problems.

I still have some cupcakes to decorate and I've got some ideas for that. I've also got an extra round cake to do and a lot of icing left over so I will probably play a bit more. But this is the official birthday cake.

Cheers,

Sandy

Pretty impressed with myself

Hi All,

Friday is my husband's birthday and every year I do a cake for him. This year I've decided to go elegant and traditional. I've never successfully done buttercream roses before and I thought it was time to learn.

These are my first attempts - I'm happy enough with them that I think I can do them for the cake.

The centre one is made out of modelling chocolate, but my husband decided that he didn't like that so the icing roses it is.

I'll post photos later of the hopefully very successful cake.

Cheers,

Sandy