60th Diamond Wedding Anniversary Cake

Well it's about time I made something a little more traditional isn't it? I always make these quirky cakes, and I do love them and am used to the crazy ideas. So when I was asked to make a cake for a 60th wedding anniversary I knew it had to be quite traditional. It was a bit of a challenge for me but it's good to do something different than what I'm used to, I also got try out some of my latest baking buys too. No sparkly butterflies or 2D Super Mario's on this one!

They wanted the cake in a diamond shape, with a pretty cake topper and to feature carnations. I'd seen some nice cake toppers online but they're so expensive! So I had the great idea that I could always try to make one..these people do so why couldn't I? I googled for a while to find a good tutorial and I found one telling me how to make spiral wire toppers, perfect.

They're really pretty and you add beads to them which makes them look a bit like jewelry, I made this a couple of weeks ago so I would have time to re-do it if it went wrong. Luckily it came out really nice. As it was for a diamond wedding anniversary I bought some diamond looking beads and also ruby red diamond shape ones to match the flowers as those were the flowers in the original bridal bouquet.

My hands were sore for the next day or two as you need to apply some serious pressure on the pliers when you make them, but it looked just like the photo so it was worth it and much better than buying a generic one online. You can also make pretty wire hearts and stars for the toppers so I think I will practice them next. I was going to make diamond sweets...but the liquid sugar melted and pretty disformed my moulds! So I quickly gave up on that idea and dedicated more time to the flowers. 

Next I made the flowers. I made these from red Florist Sugarpaste, and the Wilton Gum Paste Flowers making set I bought recently. It took me a few goes to get the ruffling right on the carnations but once I got it I thought they came out really well, the trick is to make them really thin. They dry so quick I don't know why I haven't been brave enough to try it out before rather than trying with fondant all of the time. the only problem was that when they dried their colour was lighter than it first was. All I did was mix up some Christmas Red Sugarflair colouring paste with a bit of water utnil it was like poster paint consistency and simply painted the colour on and let them dry overnight. They came out really vivid and quite shiny too.

The rest of the cake was easy in comparison. I can be a bit of an angry baker! But I was fairly calm throughout! I made two large rectangle cakes, sandwiched them jam and a huge helping of buttercream and freehand cut the diamond shape. It was going to be portrait but the writing on top was too large. I covered the cake in ivory fondant and did another diamond in white for contrast. I used another gadget here too. To do the writing I used my Make Any Message Wilton set. You choose you're message, slide the letters into the holder and gently press down onto the fondant, you can then pipe the writing on nicely and not worry about it coming out in a straight line or not looking uniformed. This is great for me as my handwriting isn't always the best, especially when there's pressure to get it perfect! I did the writing with royal icing. I've never made my own writing icing as I always thought you needed meringue powder. But I just mixed the royal icing sugar with water, very little, to the point it's so thick it wouldn't run anywhere. I coloured it with Christmas Red and piped it on. I can't actually believe how good it looks, because if you make a mistake with red on white there is no going back! I used my Tala Squeezey decorating bottles again and changed the nozzles for a tiny writing one. I also used these for the plain royal icing around the base of the cake and the diamond shape.

As you can see it's not on a usual cake board. I couldn't find one big enough!! I had to get my brother to make me one.  I finished it all off my sticking the topper in the top in a posey pick, stuck the flowers on with royal icing and tied it all up with some red ribbon from the local greeting card shop. Does anyone else find it hard to get ribbons on without them being a bit slack and needing pins?

Sorry about the essay! There was a lot of prep that went into this cake so a lot to talk about! Hope I haven't bored your to death with my technical jabber. As a friend told me it's nice to have a traditional cake on your portfolio, so there you go, it's not just giant cupcakes and pink buttercream...though I do have one to do tomorrow! :)

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