Due to everything going on I haven't actually done much baking except as the title suggests one very special birthday cake.
The cake was for my lovely Niece who turned 21 back in August, When I first started messing around with cake decorating Ella asked be if I would make her 21st birthday cake the following year, I agreed and then promptly forgot about it until a month or so before her birthday.
We started discussing cake ideas, numbers, flavours etc and eventually Ella decided she liked a two tier cake I'd helped a friend make, the cake in question was a two tier navy and white cake topped with feathers and a diamante number, she however didn't like the colour so I suggested she went away and came up with a final list for me.
Here is what she came up with, purple icing, chocolate cake, flowers, horseshoes, feathers, sparkle and diamante number.
At this point I started to panic, it was sounding a bit like something you might see on that gypsy wedding programme, but after lots of planning and browsing the internet I came up with a design I was happy that Ella would love and that I was happy to make.
As the time approached to make the cake I discovered the party was going to be in a national trust park over 200 miles from where I live, so more panic, how was I going to transport a stacked cake all that distance, in the middle of august without it collapsing or the temperature in the car killing the cake?
Thank goodness for the people at the craft company http://www.craftcompany.co.uk/ not only did they talk to me and reassure me that it would all be fine they also advised me on the best way to stack a cake and the best products to use to do that, so I ordered everything I needed and started to relax until I discovered that I didn't have enough of the purple icing I needed so again I phoned the craft company in a panic and they arranged to ship out the extra icing that I needed that day even though it was after there cut off point for sending out orders.
My Purple icing arrived the very next day, anyone who wants a lovely purple icing try this http://www.craftcompany.co.uk/ingredients/ready-to-roll-icing/m-b-ready-to-roll-luxury-sugarpaste-amethyst-500g.html I find that it is a little harder to work with than the regal ice but the colours are worth the extra effort.
So after all that did the cake make it all that way in one piece? yes it did despite myself and my husband having a few words of disagreement along the way about the quality of his driving and a very near miss when someone kindly cut us up on the motorway we made it, not 100% unscathed as one of the decorative flowers broke, which messed up my colour scheme but luckily I had a spare in a diiferent colour.
Most important of all though was that the birthday girl loved it.
