This design was based on one in Collette Peters’ book, A Cake to Dream On.
Chocolate bottom tier and vanilla for the other two tiers – the tiers with gumpaste ribbon roses on are ploystyrene dummies.
The vanilla cakes weren’t as deep as they should have been (4") as they weren’t firm enough when I came to ice them so had to be rebaked in a hurry – I didn’t have time to bake two layers for each cake but did manage to get 3" cakes when I baked single layers the second time so that had to do!
It was a scary moment hammering the dowel through the cake and a crack did appear right at the front of the middle tier (I think it would have been fine if I’d had time to let the icing set overnight though so it wouldn’t put me off doing it again) but that was hidden very easily with a gumpaste leaf.
Embossed with a tracing wheel and then painted with lustre dusts mixed with alcohol with beaded wires pushed in amongst the flowers for a little bit of ‘bling’ – there are also silver smarties nestled amongst them somewhere.
I’m really proud of how it turned out but wouldn’t want to do another one in a hurry – that’s a lot of pressure and even though I took a week off work to make it, I was still finishing it on the morning of the wedding. If my top tiers had been OK and if I didn’t have to go out and buy ‘proper’ fondant rather than try and use the supermarket stuff I usually use on my much less ambitious novelty cakes that wouldn’t stop tearing then I think it could probably have been done in 3½ days. I’ll know better next time. I’m hoping next time won’t be for a very long time though…