Birthday cake - a commission!

Wow, I can't believe how long it has been since I last posted - time has gone by so quickly and so much has happened! But I'll save that for another post.

I just wanted to post some pictures of the birthday cake I have made for a colleague of mine who asked if I would make it for her for which she bought me a little baking tray with teddy bear moulds on for me which was really lovely of her.
Anyway despite it being such a busy weekend, I managed to fit in making this cake - somehow! I made the cake on Friday night and then on Saturday I added the jam and buttercream and covered the cake in white sugarpaste and then today (Sunday) I finally decorated it.

I wasn't entirely sure how to go about decorating it at first but I decided to use the applique technique we'd learned in cake class this past week (I'll do another post on that!) but in order to do this, I had to go shopping - such a shame :p I'd heard in cake class about this place in Warrington - not far from Gemini retail park - but on the other side of the motorway and it's a very well stocked shop - I walked in and was like 'Wow' and spent the best part of an hour there. I needed to buy leaf cutters and veiner and also some flower cutters and some green dusting powder so I could paint on the vines.

One mistake I made when decorating, which I won't be making again, was that I cut out loads of flowers and leaves in a variety of colours but just didn't think about the sugarpaste going hard, so I had to be very careful when adding to the cake as they were no longer pliable, which unfortunately meant the decoration lost some of its 3D effect. I also made too many flowers and leaves so ended up throwing the remainder away which is a shame.

I'm also disappointed with how the writing turned out - getting things straight and symmetrical is not a strong skill of mine. I feel I am mastering the actual writing itself and the lettering is fine (well not bad anyway) but I'm struggling with the placement of the words and I'm not entirely sure how to rectify this. As you can see in the picture below, the top line needs to be shifted to the left a bit lol. Maybe it'll just be practice...


 Anyway I really hope Geraldine likes the cake, which is the main concern overall. Hope you all enjoy the photos as well.