Mom's birthday cake. (March 2001)

I totally screwed this one up when I baked it. I actually made it from scratch, went out of the room for a couple minutes too long, and the cake was dry as a bone when i pulled it out of the oven. I was extremely upset at the time, and I came very close to putting my fist right through it, but I didn't have the time to bake another one and still get it decorated before my mom arrived, so it had to do. :(

The sides were done as basketweaving with a #5 tip, which, as my mom pointed out, looks an awful lot like wicker. (see photo #4 to see what I mean) The roses on top are royal icing. The letters are runouts I did with royal icing on waxed paper (see the last photo) and then stuck on the cake using icing as glue. Everything else is buttercream.

Problems: Well, the biggest problem was that i baked it too long. This was the driest cake I have ever tasted. I nearly cried when I realized it. Also, The roses are a little too upright for my taste. At the time, I was having problems making them open a little wider, but I have since discovered what I was doing wrong: I was holding the icing bag at 6:00 instead of at 4:30. When I started doing the roses at 4:30, it made all the difference in the world. Then, of course, there was the problem with the icing getting soft again as I did the wicker basketweave. I had the same problem when I made Noddy's cake (above) with the icing getting soft and changing shades of white toward the end. I even tried sticking it in the freezer for a few minutes, but it wasn't very long before the icing returned to that super-soft consistency. I asked Debbie about it finally, and she suggested I keep filling the bag up with icing, which sounds like a good idea to me. I'll try that next time around.