When her daughters contacted me with an invite to a celebration for my cousins 40th Wedding Anniversary I offered to make the cake as my gift to their parents. Our families have always been close despite being spread far and wide. Along with the girls an outline design was agreed featuring roses, berries (I chose rose hips) and lace. The day of the celebration was beautiful, but hot from the off. It was with trepidation that I set off on that 60 mile journey to Essex with only cakes 1 & 2 stacked and no flowers positioned. Yes the cakes softened but the milk chocolate ganache held up and with a little smoothing, good order was returned.

I made my own pastillage for the flowers, leaves and rose hips in the base colours and then airbrushed to get light and shade..

Red Velvet is a favourite in this household and became the 8" middle cake sitting on a 10" vanilla sponge and topped of with a 6"death by chocolate.

I had the topper made by a firm in the UK called Little Shop of Wishes. It must be said that the service was excellent.