Number 60 Birthday Cake

This order was for a special double birthday celebration, there was a large cake required for the father who was turning sixty & also a dozen cupcakes for the mother who was also celebrating her birthday at the same time.

I thought that it was really touching that they made a special effort to in effect have two separate orders so that neither the mother or father would have to have a shared cake.

So first the cake.  As you can see the customer wanted to have the cake actually in the shape of a 60 (I like doing number cakes, not sure why).  When I was enquiring as to what colours design etc they wanted the only thing they said was that it would be good if they could have some red & green incorporated because their father was a mad South Sydney Rabbitohs fan (it is funny really, I am always more than happy to use any design, theme or colours that people would like but they often seem reluctant to give to much direction, why is that I wonder).

Anyway I am not much of a NRL footy fan myself so I did a little research into the teams colours, shirts & logo & I decided it would be kind of fun to go with a design similar to their shirts if he was so much of a fan.  So I ended up using a bright green base & thick bright red stripes, I also needed another colour to break it up somewhat so I used white to cover the cake board as the rabbit on the logo & the collar on the shirt is white.

This cake was my 'Killer Chocolate' a moist milk chocolate sponge cake, it was teamed up with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream for the filling (there were 3 layers) & covered with dark chocolate ganache for the crumb coat.  Finally was the home made marshmallow fondant covering.

Next we have the cupcakes.  Again the client choose the flavours for the cake & buttercream but left the design & colours to me.  I wanted to achieve two things, firstly I wanted the cupcakes to be different to the cake & much more feminine to ensure they were more personal for the mother however I also wanted to tie them into the cake in some way.

I thought that hand made sugar roses would be just perfect, so nice & feminine so that is what I went with.  I made them in red to tie in with the main cake (much darker than the bright red on the cake though), I also used a few slightly different shades of red to make the roses appear more realistic.  To incorporate the green on the cake I decorated the cupcakes with tiny green sugar pearls & used green cupcake liners.

I also made some "happy birthday" message toppers, which I think I would add some small green leaves to next time.

The cake for the cupcakes was my 'Blondie' (vanilla butter sponge cake) & the frosting was a caramel Swiss meringue buttercream.

Here are some close ups of the roses I made....