Need help / suggestions with decorating a Ruby Wedding Anniversary Cake please!

[mumatuks]

Hi Everyone,

I'm not one that you'd usually find on the Art and Crafts thread, so I'm asking for your help please!

Basically its the PIL 40th Wed. Anniversary on Sunday. I've brought the cake (9inch diameter) from Tesco, so I have a blank canvas. Where do I go from here? Do I use a spray of flowers? What about icing, do I pipe it on? Any tips suggestions or shops where I can get the stuff to use is gratefully recieved!

TIA!

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What looks very nice for celebration cakes imo is a spray of stars on wire a bit like these starburst ones

V easy to do, any good cake shop will sell the bits of wire, you can make little icing stars (or buy them) in a ruby colour and attach them to the end of the wires when not yet dried. Then make a 4 and a 0 a bit bigger for the middle, you could put writing on the cake too.

oh you're fab! I love the spray idea and I know it will go down well with the MIL!

Thankyou so much CD!!

No prob! I did one for my grandmother's 90th birthday and it went down really well

You can also get sparklers shaped like numbers to light on the cake

Have you any experience of cake decorating? I did a golden anniv. a while back, and made sugarpaste roses in yellows and golds and then stuck them in an arrangement a bit like a bouquet on the cake. Sugarpaste is easy to handle - think slightly stiff playdo. To make a simple rose : roll a sausage thickness of pencil. Flatten with rolling pin, rollup from one end like a swiss roll, pinch one open end together to make base of flower, then open out other end to fan out the petals. Experiment with thickness etc - the longer the initial sausage the fuller the flower, if it is short looks like a bud. Where to get stuff - can get sugarpaste from supermarket, but a dedicated cake dec shop better, you can then buy it pre coloured. If you buy white and colour it yourself you must use paste not liquid colouring otherwise it goes sticky! If this sounds a bit complicated post again and I'll come up with something a bit simpler - I love decorating cakes - where dod you live - if near me I would help/lend you stuff as have loads

You're a life saver CD, I am truly thankful! I hope you feel very warm and fluffy on the inside now as you have helped me a great deal and you deserve to be smug all afternoon!

PandaG Yet another great suggestion. I'm in Essex. I was wondering about sugarcraft flowers.

I only have until Sunday and no I don't have much exp. of decoarting cakes! Although saying that I made our wedding cupcakes and decorated them with red hearts made from icing. Everybody asked who'd made them! I nearly ended up walking up the eisle with red hands from the dye!! LOL!

Seen as I have two little ones I'm going to keep it simple. Ha! I know my eldest will be hovering looking for icing to eat.

Remeber you can always buy the flowers and do the rest: MIL is a confectioner (a pretty fab one, for all her faults... Woman's Own Cake Decorator of the year a few years ago, no less). She gets as many orders for 'toppers'- roses, sugarcraft letters for names, castles, even icing swathes, as she does entire cakes. And quite a lot of people like to make the cake then have her decorate it.

The trick is if you've got time and are brave go for it! If you're short of time / newrvous / not really wanting to do it, do the bits you're good at and hand the rest over. it's not as if it takes a lot: an all white cake with a single ruby rose is fab, or icing in ruby forming swathey 'curtains' down the side.

I'm up North so won't be able to help you - those starburst cakes look great btw. Have you considered a quick trip to the library - mine usually has some cake decorating books in it? Also, the staff in our local cake decorating shop are really helpful - worth finding out if there is one nearby imo and paying a visit. If you want to go for the ahh factor, and not much work for you, you could buy some white sugarpaste, roll it out into a plaque to fit top of cake and let it dry for a bit so the top crusts. Then let ds draw a picture on the top with edible pens - available from most supermarkets! Move plaque carefully - you will need icing sugar on work surface to stop it sticking, and a fish slice! Can always do it on greaseproof paper, then can remove whole lot from top of cake before it is eaten, so PIL's can keep it as a memento!