Rose Garden Cake

I was asked to make a 60th birthday cake this week. The design we decided on was a rose garden cake and a vanilla sponge cake, jam filling. 

My first job was to make the cake, for this I used Mary Berry's recipe found here. It worked well and I was happy with the finished product. I filled the cake with some good quality raspberry jam and placed it on an iced cake board. 

Victoria Sponge

I covered the cake in a layer of butter icing in preparation for the decorations. 

Butter iced and ready to go. 

To make the rose bushes I first of all focused on making the flowers. Having never made these before I looked it up in a book to get a bit of an idea. It was made more difficult because the flowers were so tiny but I managed to make a range of flowers in varieties of pinks and purples. 

Little Roses

With these flowers I made some bushes by wrapping them in brown icing and then sticking leaves on top of this to create a bush effect. It might not be typically rose bush like but I think it's close enough to look effective. 

I made some paving slabs and a plaque out of icing and harden it with gum and then I set about designing the cake. I placed everything on the cake to get an idea of design. 

Placing on the cake to design

I wanted to make the borders out of biscuits and I was asked to make coconut grass so this was my next challenge. I used chocolate digestives and crushed these. Making sausages out of brown icing I marked out the borders and then carefully filled this in with the biscuits. 

Biscuit borders

I coloured some coconut green and carefully placed this in all the gaps and around the edge of the cake. It was difficult to get it to stick to the icing but I managed to get enough on the cake to get some coverage. 

Coconut Grass

I then stuck everything onto the cake. 

All stuck together

Unfortunately the pink plaque broke so I made another one out of white and carefully piped the lettering on to this. I then placed it on the cake and it was finished. 

Finished Cake Top

Side view

Top View

Unfortunately this plaque also broke in transit so I had to make another one. I wasn't as happy with the final one as the previous one but I hope it was ok.

New plaques!!

Overall I was really happy with the cake and I don't think, at this stage, I could have done any better. I've learnt a lot from creating this cake and I hope that the birthday lady and my "client" were also happy. 

If you have an event you'd like a cake for please get in touch. We can discuss a design to suit and at present (November 2013) I'm creating cakes for the cost of the ingredients.