90th birthday!

Continuing on from fondant fun, this is the post about what the actual cake and cupcakes looked like!

I was asked, and honoured to be asked, to make a cake and matching cupcakes for a friend's mother's 90th birthday this month. This request marks two new accomplishments for me, as the this was the first time I'd:

a) Made red velvet cake/cupcakes; and
b) Worked with fondant!

I used this recipe for the Red Velvet mixture.

My trial version of this was a bit of a disaster, as I followed the recipe sooo carefully, sifted the flour, put it aside, mixed everything else into the bowl, divided the mixture between the cake tin and cupcake patties, put them in the oven, and felt so proud of myself for doing such a great job!

... Until I turned around, and found sitting on the bench (in a bowl of course) the sifted flour that I had forgot to even put into the mixture! Ahh.

Since then, I've been a lot more careful and aware of where I put everything! And this one turned out much better (funny that). This is before and after going into the oven with all the ingredients:

With red flower moulding paste and a flower cutter, I made flowers just like I had practiced in the post about me practicing using fondant. This time, to make the flowers a bit more special, I still placed a silver cachous in the centre, but also painted on some Wilton sparkle gel onto them all... With little letter cutters (and more sparkle gel), I cut out the letters to spell what needed to go onto the cake once it was iced.

Taking my son's advice from my trial leaves last month, I made small indents into them to make them 'look more real'...

Practicing with some cupcake cases, I tried to work out how they would all fit onto the cake stand (which I didn't end up using, because the cupcakes were a little smaller than what would have fitted into the cases anyway, unfortunately), but you get the idea of what I was doing with my time:

As well as practicing of how the letters would be arranged on top of the cake:

But now, with everything iced and ready to go*:

* I added 'th' to the 90, and slightly rearranged the big leaves on the cake upwards a bit, so that they looked less like a moustache, and a little more like leaves! :)

Happy birthday Joan!!