Happy Birthday, to Me!

Happy Birthday!
(+5 skill points => 375/400)   

Is it funny that what I want to do on my birthday is make myself a cake?  I'm happy that I got some time to practice my hobby and try new things.  Maybe hubby will clean up my mess ...

Stats:

• 8" round doctored vanilla cake mix
• iced and filled with American buttercream with Ghirardelli unsweetened cocoa powder
• vertical piped buttercream using Wilton tip #7
• modeling chocolate topper with kitty cat patchwork cutter design

I bought a can of Ghirardelli unsweetened cocoa powder to work with.  I just used the recipe on the back of the can.  It's been a good while since I've worked with crusting buttercream.  Gotta say I don't miss this gritty powdered sugar.

Hubby and I bought a new food processor!  Now I can make cake crumbs with ease :)  This makes me super excited about my upcoming cake ball class.

Dam using cake spackle.

Leveled using a serrated knife ... um ... I need to get an Agbay.  Can't you see it's slanted???

 Still too lazy and untalented to get smooth icing.

 I've been wanting to try this design that I saw on a wedding cake on cakecentral.com:

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo_1778231.html

Grab some aspirin and get comfy.  This takes a while.  I scored some guidelines along the cake with my spatula.  I started piping vertical lines using Wilton tip #7.  Then I realized I could just make really long zig-zags instead of stopping after every line.  I still stopped every 3-4 lines to give my wrist a break.

 I should have timed myself.

Ick, the buttercream had all these holes.  Too much air incorporated!

Finally!  An excuse to use my cute cutters that I bought in February.

Oh ... turns out you don't cut with these ... you impress the design.

Like this.

I had rolled out some modeling chocolate on my silicon baking mat.  I love how I don't need to prep the mat; nothing sticks to this sucker.  After imprinting the design, it was popped into the freezer for ~1 minute.  On to a cutting board and curvy-cut with a paring knife.

Final cake.

Not as pretty as that wedding cake, but was great to try.

Happy birthday, to me!