A Friday farewell...

Farewells can be both sad, and delightful. Sad, because it means someone is leaving a particular group, team, or community; and delightful, because there's often cake involved (and if it wasn't obvious yet, cake is what I do!).

Well, tonight is the last official youth group for one of our church's youth group leaders, so they are having a farewell party. Husband (who leads the youth group team), asked me in casual conversation during the week if I could make a cake for this occasion. Of course I said yes!

Being married for so long, he knew that he needed to add that he specifically wants a simple cake, and the only requirement was that it was chocolate with chocolate chips.

I was fine with the request for chocolate with chocolate chips, but, of course, once he said "simple", my mind headed straight to all the various complicated designs I had been storing up on my mental list, that were waiting for the opportunity to be made.

... And basically, I just couldn't help myself.

It took me three days to finalise on a design, which ended up being the simplified version of this complicated design I first had in mind:

An ombre style cake (dark icing on the bottom, to light icing at the top), with ombre stars twirling around the cake, with their colours going in the opposite direction (dark stars on top, to light stars at the bottom).

Somehow, I was determined to have stars on it! And somehow, it turned out to be everything Husband asked it not to be.

... Except for the chocolate part.

Thinking about how to make it an actual "farewell" cake (and not just a starry cake) I was reminded of my experience from making the Rabbitoh's cake, and wondered if I made a fondant hand that wobbled, it could be 'waving'! And basically, when I get stuck on my perception of a fantastic idea... It's really hard to find something else to make instead.

So, in the end (yes, finally I will show you what I actually made), I had just one colour of stars (made from dark chocolate), and three colours/shades of icing on the cake. The exact three colours that were on the cupcakes.

... Because I also like it when things match!

On the cupcakes, I had piped a circle of each different shade of icing, and placed one of the smallest of the dark chocolate stars that I had cut out:

And with all three sizes of stars, I arranged them on top of the cake:

Lastly, I stuck the "wobbly" hand into the cake!

I didn't take a video of it waving, so you're just going to have to imagine it. In the ideal world, the hand wobbles from left to right to symbolise a wave; but, if it were to wobble forward and backwards, it would symbolise a hi-five! A win-win situation, really.

Thank you for all of your time, hard work, and effort

you've put into leading the youth group, Aimee!

Good luck with your next adventure :)

"Farewell!"