Another Birthday Cake

Last week I had an order for not one, but TWO birthday cakes. They were both chocolate cakes with an assortment of chocolate buttercreams and frostings layered in. It was for one of my dad's friends, so I knew it had to look good. As I've mentioned before, I'm not really a decorator. I can use a star tip, but that's about it. So when the guy first emailed me and asked for a regular cake I said 'no problem.' Then he asked for a second cake and I said 'sure, that's easy.' Then he asked that one cake say 'Happy Birthday Momma' and one say 'Happy Birthday Joan Mary' and I said 'that's a piece of cake.' When really I was terrified of having to pipe anything, let alone pretty letters onto two cakes. I've never practiced piping in cursive or working with different frostings to see which one pipes best. But that was what the customer wanted and I was going get it done.


I made the cakes,  and they were moist and delicious as always. Then I made the frostings (4 to be exact) and they were on point. Then came the decorating. Putting together the cakes went smoothly, no crumbs in frosting, no freakish abscess. So I decided to do a white piping to contrast with the chocolate cake. I whipped up some simple buttercream, slapped it in a bag, cut off the tip, and sat there in front of the cake, for a while. After wrestling over where to start on the cake and how big to pipe the letters I went for it....

First attempt = TERRIBLE. The entire phrase was way too far the the right and 'Joan Mary' was quite a bit smaller than everything else. So I scraped it off and tried again.

Second attempt = The 'Happy Birthday' turned out okay, but the 'Joan Mary' was still off. So I scraped it off and tried again. Are you seeing a pattern?

Third attempt = This time I felt it looked good enough to present to the client so I quickly shoved it in the fridge and forgot about it.

YAY I'm done, I can finally relax. Wait, NOOOOO. I still had another cake to put together! The second cake assembly went exactly as the first. Pipe, scrape. Pipe, Scrape. Finished!

So here are the final products. I'm pretty pleased with the result, although thinking back to the decorating still gets me....