Birthday Cake!

I've always been fascinated with those professional cakes - the smooth white icing and fondant embellishments that just seemed impossible.

So for my friend's birthday party I decided to blindly have a go! Well not completely blindly, the good old Women's Weekly Birthday Cake Book has become a bit posh of late and has expanded it's range from buttercream to the more fancy varieties.

I copied their idea for an apricot jam layer and a white chocolate ganache to seal the packet chocolate cake (you can't get too ambitious) and then had a play with the ready to roll icing. Despite getting a bit dry it turned out smooth and clean even though I (yes super overachiever!) decided it would be fun to make all the cakes different sizes and so had to fiddle a bit to cut the dimensions for each correctly.

The real trouble I ran across was in making the red icing to do the decoration and I have one vital piece of Stepford information for you - Find food colouring pastes or powders! I searched everywhere and found nothing so I attempted it with liquid colouring which was SO hard. To get the right consistency of icing - not sloppy! and the right colour - not pink was a real drama.

And it had to be RED - our theme was 'High School Musical'

eventually after a lot of massaging, chemistry with icing sugar and 'Pillarbox Red' food dye, and Pillarbox Red stained hands and clothes (and I had gloves on!) we got there, and I was pretty proud of the finished product.

It's not too hard if you do it right (pastes people!!) and everyone, especially Miss Fiona the birthday girl loved it.

I was pretty happy too :)