Phew!

We were promised a day of sunshine and showers and that's what we got with more of the sun in the afternoon. 

It was to be another day of cake decorating and the first job was to cover the cake with fondant icing. This time was still not perfect but much better than yesterday's attempt. Next thing was to make some royal icing to stick on the various leaves and roses. Then I thought that instead of making the rose stems from black fondant I might try piping black royal icing. But I didn't have enough icing sugar to make the icing stiff enough for piping. No problem, Peter's work finishes early on Fridays so I would ask him to buy a bag of icing sugar on his way home. I stood in the front doorway to get a good signal to send my text, turned around and horror upon horrors Speedy and Patch were up on the table nibbling at the icing. The miscreants got shut in the conservatory and after I had cut away the nibbled bit with a good margin around  I calmed myself down and assessed the situation. I couldn't do any repairs until Peter got home with the icing sugar but there was nothing to stop me decorating the front of the cake with my red rose design. I made the stems out of fondant ropes stuck on with royal icing. Once Peter got home I repaired the cake reasonably well. As I already had some black royal icing half made up I made it suitable for piping and after a few practice goes on some scrap icing did some swirly piping on the back of the cake just to show Sally and then finished off the cake with black piping dots all around the bottom. I'll keep on practicing both the royal icing and the fondant icing and see which looks the best. Peter says the demo cake looks great but I think I could do better.

I've decided not to show the demo cake but here is one of the red velvet cup-cakes which has the same leaves and hand made roses.