Mom's Birthday Cake

My mom's birthday was last week, and I've been wanting to make her something special.  Cupcakes just wouldn't do.  I hadn't made a tiered cake in quite some time so I decided I would make one for my mommy.  I love making fancy pretty things.  :)  I scoured through thousands of flickr photos and all of my cake books for ideas.  I have to say I was inspired by so many cakes.  You guys and ladies on flickr are true artists!!  So many ideas, so many beautiful cakes, but I needed something simple since I only had one day to do it.  I had to cook Thanksgiving dinner for my family of 18 the same weekend.  

I made a sketch of what I wanted to do so my mind will stay focused.  I see so many of you out there with gorgeous drawings of your creations, but all I could muster was swirls for the flowers and dots all over the cylinder and hexagon (brings back memories of geometry in JHS).  It's a pretty pathetic drawing since I'm a stick figure type of gal, but it helped immensely on staying focused.  I had my sisters over to brain storm on flavors and colors.  We originally agreed on MMF covered dark chocolate cake with ganache and cheesecake, but I was making cheesecake for Thanksgiving, so we switched that to sponge cake with lemon curd and homemade strawberry jam.  Our mom loves pink but we didn't want a princess-y girlie cake so we went for ivory/ light pink with pink accents.

 

I even signed up for gumpaste classes hoping I could make beautiful bouquets of calla lillies, roses, orchids, and every other flower that was offered in the class description.  Just my luck, first class was cancelled due to low enrollment, so I went to another school, signed up, purchased all the supplies, and waited only to find out it was postponed.  As my last option, I went to my local Michael's to take their classes, but classes had already began.  Boo hoo hoo... what do I do?!?  I had all the supplies already so I just played around with the rose kit a couple of days before and came up with flowers that remind me more of magnolias than roses.  They took me forever since my klumsy fingers kept ripping the petals and pulling the entire flower out of the wires.  I ended up with a handful of passable ones that I dusted with pearly dusts in different colors.  They aren't that pretty, but I liked them anyway especially since I made them all by myself.  I'm sure the light bulb will go off, and I'll have a good chuckle once I get into a class.

In the end, my mom loved the cake and was quite impressed with the flowers even though I saw all the flaws.  The cakes tasted much better than I had anticipated (we finished all of it), so all in all I'm quite proud of it and can't wait until my next one.  :D