I had no idea how I would connect each flower to form the plant until Mr Chris' manager kindly donated a wire coat hanger to the cause. I cut the coat hanger and shaped it to form the main branch, wrapped it with florist tape, and then attached each flower and bud with more florist tape. 

I use poly dowels to support my tiered cakes, which are strong but hollow dowels, and therefore also perfect for holding an Orchid branch! Placed through the centre of the cake, my Orchid fitted snugly inside and it did a great job keeping it secure and upright. I hid the top of the dowel peaking out of the cake with fondant leaves, and the wooden dowel alongside it is purely for show to mimic a real Orchid.


The plant pot itself is three layers of chocolate cake sandwiched together with chocolate buttercream, and the soil on top is crushed Oreo cookies, a nice addition as they add a little chocolate crunch.

On this occasion I didn't decorate the cake board. Mr Chris suggested we leave it blank in an attempt to trick his Mum into thinking it was a real Orchid. Instead I added a poorly written edible gift tag.



















We celebrated Maggie's birthday with a family meal out and instead of bringing the cake out at the end, we placed it in the centre of the restaurant table. At first glance everyone thought we'd brought another Orchid for Maggie's collection but as Maggie went to pick it up we had to warn her it was cake :) 

I'd say it was a success and I confess, I am a little bit in love with this cake.

•  Decorations separated in to muffin cases - to ensure they all got the same and avoid any squabbles

•  A paper bowl to catch any sprinkles that missed the cupcakes - very wise after Lissie emptied a entire pot of sprinkles on to her first cupcake :D

•  And a small piece of rolled out fondant placed in a sandwich bag to keep it from drying out - and I placed some cutters and plungers in the middle
As they're only little I iced the cupcakes for them but with older children you could let them pipe the icing and roll out the fondant themselves. I thought they might be a little young for the fondant but with a little help from the adults it was nice to see they all had a go at cutting some shapes.

For her birthday cake, Lissie requested a Go Jetters cake. This meant nothing to me but after some research and learning some funky facts this is what I came up with.


I have to admit, I got quite attached to Ubercorn, I think he's pretty cool! 

In hindsight not so cool to put his dance floor on to a black background. In fact I should have incorporated some lights to make his dance floor flash - I wish I'd thought of that sooner!

As for the Go Jetters, I knew I wouldn't have enough time to make models of them all so I followed a Cakey Cake tutorial to make 2D cut outs instead.

As you can see I may have mastered sharp edges but not those corners - clearly I need more practice on square cakes. Thankfully my customer was blissfully unaware :)

And inside? Well you can't go wrong with a vanilla sponge and vanilla buttercream - it's a crowd pleaser.