Happy Birthday Cake

I've always thought cupcakes were cute. Small, little, bite sized, mini cakes...whats not to love. I started playing around with decorating cupcakes right around the time I started my current job. I made fast friends with the other girl that works in the office. I soon found out she was a cake decorator...and a good one too!! She started teaching me bits and pieces about the cake decorating world. She fed my desire and ultimately helped lead me to this new addiction. On Wednesday I went to lunch with my boss and he informed me that my co-worker's (friend/cake decorator) birthday was yesterday. He wanted me to make her a cake. Yikes!! That was a tall order, it made me nervous. How do you make a cake for someone that has made cakes for much longer than you have? However, once again, not wanting to back down from a challenge and wanting to help celebrate her birthday...I told him I would, I would make her a cake. I had ONE night! Here is what I turned out:




I sketched my design out onto a piece of paper, colored my fondant/gum paste mix pink, blue and green and then cut out the flower shape I had chosen for my design:

I set my flowers upside down on top of coloring containers (and eventually I ran out of those and used wine bottles). I wanted my flowers to dry in a curved upward way. I glued (with sugar glue) white sugar pearls in the center of the smaller flowers:
I took a snapshot of the finished flowers on parchment paper:

I left my flowers to dry and started making the butter cream frosting:

I spread a layer of frosting between the two cake circles:

I spread a thin layer of frosting over the entire cake. This process is called "crumb coating" it peals up all of the loose crumbs. Then I let the cake sit for a minute or two in the fridge, so the frosting could set:

TaDa, an iced cake!

Added the bottom boarder:

The BEST part!! Decorating the cake:

The Finished Product!!!

This cake was really fun to make!! It's only my third cake...but I'm pretty excited with the way it turned out. The best part of cake decorating, giving the cake to the person it was intended for!!