Flower Birthday Cake

 

I made this 2 weeks ago for a good friend of mine, W.  She likes flowers and I thought a flower cake might be appropriate especially since I have been itching to try my silicon flower cake mold.   This was my attempt for the 2nd time at a sponge cake.  Chocolate sponge cake to be exact.  I wouldn't say I failed dismally as it looked the part but I overcooked it.  There were 3 layers so I put the 2 round cake pans at the back and the flower pan in the front.  

As the flower pan was deeper, it cooked slower and it didn't occur to me at the time that the 2 round cake pans which wasn't as deep was happily baking ahead.  In the end, I should have taken the round cakes out about 3 minutes earlier.  They turned out a little dry and not moist and spongey as it ought to have been.

The Birthday Girl and friends were happy with the cake, but I know it could have been better.  

The decorations were... pretty but took sooooo long to frost in the star method.  With 2 kids, it is almost impossible to get any decorating done when they are awake.  Especially if my daughter who is 20 months old is around.  She likes cakes and if she sees it, she has to have it.  So that means the night shift.  I started the top at about 12am.  Got to the end of the flower by 1am.  It took awhile as I had to remix the colours after every 2 lines or so to get that gradient effect.

By 2am I was on to the yellow stars and at this point I was thinking, "Damn, I should have used a larger tip!".  Well too late then.  My hand was getting tired from squeezing minutely and moving fractionally to the right after every star.  I had to stop more than a few times to flex the muscles a bit.   Sometimes the stars would be perfect and sometimes they would be go a bit wonky.  Concentration started to get a bit difficult at 3am and I started to run out of buttercream!  Great.   I had to squeeze every bit of buttercream out of that piping bag and this includes pushing the bag right into the tip.   Even then, I still had to sneak some from the white buttercream I had saved for the border.  It worked out in the end though.

I am going to try the sponge cake again to make sure I get it right.  It normally takes me about 3 attempts before I get the result I want.  It has to be a combination of tweaks to the recipe and adjustments based on my oven.  All the same, having spoken to other friends sponges aren't easy to make so I will post some advice I found on Australian Women's Weekly.