Birthday Cake :)

Firstly, apologies for my absence this last week - energy has not been forthcoming for laptop use! I have managed a few art projects though, so will try and share them over the coming weeks :)

Anyway, today is my birthday! I don't care how old I am, birthdays are exciting, and a chance to celebrate as much as possible. I LOVE baking, and saw this as an excuse to try two new cake recipes, ombre cake layers, and gum paste work...!

The top tier is made from my new favourite chocolate cake recipe, by Whisk Kid. It is really moist and yummy. It contains coffee, but you can't tell, it just tastes divine; and I subbed the sour cream for homemade buttermilk (milk + white wine vinegar) and extra butter.

The bottom tier is this vanilla cake recipe, by Raspberri Cupcakes. Again, it's lovely and moist. I am still looking for my perfect vanilla cake recipe, though. The bottom tier consists of four layers in ombre shades of orange. I could only snap a photo quickly whilst it was being served, but hopefully you can see!

The cake is stacked and covered with a basic buttercream recipe, then covered in fondant tinted yellow.

The flowers are made from this sugar florists gum paste, which I tinted five shades - blue, green, yellow, orange and pink. All the colouring in the cake was made using combinations of Sugarflair's Navy, Melon and Christmas Red. The larger flowers are cut with these cutters, and the smaller ones with these cutters. I left them to dry in shaped foam and egg boxes to give them a curve, and attached them to each other and the cake with white chocolate.

Yum!