It was my cousin's 21st birthday a few weeks back. Unfortunately, we missed out on his party because of some other engagement :-( But we did have an awesome celebratory dinner the night before, at the Iron Chef restaurant in Cabramatta!
I must have been so busy enjoying the food that I forgot to take pictures. But what I do have heaps of pictures of is the cake that I made for my cousin:
They side that excessive pride in oneself is an unattractive trait, but I have to admit that I had some serious self-pride going on after I saw how the cake turned out.
Okay, I realise it's definitely not going to take home any prizes at the Royal Easter Show or anything like that, but the very fact that I, the girl who hated Art classes in school and couldn't draw to save her life, managed to pull off something like this just gave me an indescribable sense of satisfaction.
But like I said - it's certainly not the most skillfully or perfectly decorated cake in the world. I decorated the whole of the outside of the cake using a vanilla-flavoured swiss meringue buttercream. This was honestly the first time I have used buttercream for decorative piping of this sort, and it definitely shows if you look closely at the pictures. I don't even know what kind of flowers those are. I was trying to do roses, based on what I've seen in video tutorials and all the books I've read on piping flowers, but somehow they turned out looking like some sort of botanical hybrid. The leaves were added at the last moment to hide the many gaps and imperfections showing through between the flowers.
Hopefully, you can see (despite the poor quality of my photos) that I've attempted a basket-weave pattern around the side of the cake. Again, this was the first time I've tried doing this, so please pardon the wonkiness :D I have a feeling that achieving the degree of muscle control necessary for flawless piping can only come with practice, practice, and more practice. My future cakes involving basket-weave piping will look better, I just know it!
For the cake itself, I did three layers of a simple vanilla butter cake, the recipe for which I found on the lovely Sweetapolita's blog. I don't know if it was because I got the settings on my oven wrong, or because I simply had so much cake batter, but the cakes took forever to bake. And, of course, they then had to cool down and chill in the fridge before I started decorating. Let's just say there was a great deal of waiting around. But once I actually started the decorating process, it was all smooth sailing, and I had myself a jolly good time :D
The layers were filled with a thin layer of buttercream, and a generous amount of crabapple jelly. Why crabapple jelly? Well, I figured that everyone loves crabapple jelly...okay, the truth was, I was getting sick of eating the same jam on my morning crumpet day in, day out, so using this jar up would free me up to go buy some new kinds.
Some more progress pics!
When it came time for dessert, we all sort of realised at the same time that we couldn't possibly fit a slice of rich, buttery cake in after everything else we'd consumed. We were therefore happy to make do with a few slices of watermelon, and let the birthday boy take home the cake and share it at his birthday party.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that my cousin is a guy. A great, big, tall guy who loves cars, aircraft carriers, and something called 'Warhammer 40,000'. Maybe a basket of flowers wasn't the most appropriate theme for his birthday cake, but he seemed genuinely touched by my gift. And that, really, is all that matters in the end!
The proud decorator with her cake :D
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