The First Cake!

I had never decorated a cake before. However, it was my boyfriend's 22nd birthday, and I wanted to surprise him. Unfortunately, I had no idea what I was really doing.

The cake was just 2 basic victoria sponges (I'll write down my recipies later)

 Okay. Here goes. I laid the cakes side by side, and cut out a vague 'road' shape, across them. With hindsight, I would have removed all of the cake crust, before carving it. (I said it was my first cake)

          It does, quite frankly look a mess. But I still had to carve a car out of a third cake.

          Just to get this straight, my boyfriend loves his car. Adores it. So, in my quest for perfection, I found exact measurements for his car, and scaled them down to cake size. ( Yeah, I really wanted to get it right.)

          Actually carving the cake was an absolute nightmare. I didn't want to completely ruin the car, but I had no idea how to realistically create a car from a lump of cake.

          Then I found this. A very helpful how-to on how to make a 3D car cake. A few hours later, and I was decorating it to look like the original.

Fairly similar, huh?

          I covered my original cakes in buttercream, and then with some store-bought green fondant. Unfortunately, it was so dry, I was left with huge crack marks down my lovely cake. I had never intended to cover the whole cake with icing, but there was no way that I would ever give my boyfriend a cake with cracks.

The road fondant, I coloured and rolled myself, so it was fine.

Poor cake.

          Then it came to actual piping. Never piped before in my life. I didn't even own a piping bag. So, I used the method from the Hello Cupcake book, which involves using a zip-lock bag to pipe. The icing was just the vanilla Betty Crocker icing you get in a tub. Like I said, this was my first cake.

And then there was grass

          To create the chevrons, and the road sign, I just rolled out some gumpaste and allowed it to dry. You'll notice that the chevrons are cracked. This is because I am impatient a fast worker, and I picked it up too early. The sign was held up by cocktail sticks, because no gumpaste supports could hold the weight of the icing. The sheep in the background was just rolled fondant and icing.

         Overall, this cake consumed my life for about 4 days, but I think it was all worth it in the end.

Who's a happy boy?