Pink and Flowery Birthday Cake

This cake was a bit of a last minute decision. We had 2 family birthdays within 2 days of each other and I was originally going to make the cakes the same week, however, a last minute trip to London meant I could do this one a bit earlier. It isn't the most inspiring design but it gave me the chance to practice a few bits and pieces. 

I decided to make a chocolate cake so I used a standard recipe:

200g Self Raising Flour

200g Butter

200g Sugar

4 Eggs

I also added a little baking powder because I didn't use real butter and I now know this makes quite a difference. Once the cake was cooked and cooled I made some butter icing:

250g Butter

500g Icing Sugar

and flavoured it slightly with orange essence. The whole cake was then filled and covered in the icing and placed in the fridge whilst I prepared the rest. 

I decided to decorate the cake with a base colour of pink, so using gel colours, I kneaded this into some ready made icing until the colour was even. I then rolled this out between 2 sheets of clingfilm and lay it on top smoothing with my hands to get an even finish. 

Pink cake

I wanted to pipe some wording onto the top of the cake. I've never really done complex piping before and was unsure what icing to use but I decided to give it a shot with just icing sugar and water coloured slightly purple. I wanted the icing to not be too runny that it would spread everywhere but also be thin enough to pipe evenly. 

Using a letter mould I carefully indented the icing with the letters so I had a stencil to pipe onto.

Lettered indentations

I then piped the icing on top. A few letters came out a bit spread out so I scraped them off and tried again. I was reasonably happy with my efforts but I will definitely have to research and practice this further. 

Piped lettering

I then wanted to decorate the cake with flowers creating an almost lace feel. I have loads of cutters so I rolled out some white icing and set about cutting flowers of all shapes and types. I started at one point and spread out using the little flowers to fill the gaps. It was all done by eye and what I thought looked good. I didn't want to overload the cake but I also wanted them to look like they belonged. I decided to decorate down the side of the cake as well so it looked like the cake was drapped rather than just stuck on the top.

Finished cake

Flowers cover the side as well as the top

Overall I was quite pleased with the cake. The flowers came out very nicely but the lettering could have been better. 

I am looking forward to attending a cake decorating course in September where I will be learning more techniques and improving my skills. I will keep you update with my progress and I'm sure they'll be many pictures of my practicing. 

Don't forget I'm available to make cakes to order. At the moment I'm just charging the cost of the ingredients. This cake would have cost £10. Please get in touch and we can see if I can make something to your taste and preferences.