Birthday Cake

As I've said before, I like making and decorating cakes so I was thrilled to be given free range on a cake for my niece's 20th birthday. I know she's a pink girl so the dominant colour just had to be pink, and I know she loved the feathers on her sister's cake that I made last year so I got some pink feathers for the topper. I decided that I'd have a go at making a two tier cake for the first time. The bottom half chocolate and the top vanilla. The chocolate cake stuck to the pan and I lost half of it (me and Graham had the pieces with custard later) so I had to make another half a cake. It turned out to be a pretty good size in the end. And I learnt a lesson, you still need lining with silicone cake pans. The top half came out well but after putting it all together I was thinking maybe I should have gone for a smaller but taller cake. Something to keep in mind for next time.
So I thought about the top cake sinking into the bottom one and I knew you could use dowels but I thought I'd give it a google to see if there were any alternatives. I discovered that for a two tiered cake you could use drinking straws so I gave them a go. I think they worked pretty well, there was no sinking anyway.
The bottom cake I covered with pink icing and decorated with lilac stripes. My eldest complained that I should have had them all symmetrical but I wanted slightly larger gaps between the lines at the front so I could fit on the greetings plaques. I'd been asked for a long greeting so decided to split it over two plaques. The top cake I covered with a darker pink and I wanted to put lilac hearts around the side but it turned out a little too short and they wouldn't fit, so I embossed a pattern and put the hearts on the top. (Hence my thinking a smaller and taller cake would have been better)
The topper I made with silver foil coated thin wire, diamante numbers and the pink feathers. It cost me about £12 to make and took me nearly 3 days.