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50th Birthday Cake (3 Tier Flower Design) (1 Viewer)

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Here is my latest cake creation that I made for a dear friend of mine for her 50th birthday. If I'm entirely honest, I struggled a little bit coming up with a design for this one as my friend had given me free rein with it and I wasn't quite sure what kind of cake I was going to make.

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So after a few sleepless nights, a hunt through every colour known to man I decided that blue and white would be my colour of choice. Even though I had an idea, I still didn't have a vision, and this didn't come about until a discussion with our community members and a trip to my friend Jules' house with cake tins, some flowers and a few ideas to boot.

After chatting with everyone and listening/bouncing ideas, we finally came up with a 3 tier flower cake with hints of navy, some marbling and a lot of bling.

Now for the cake part:

The first thing I had to make was the flowers, to do these I used a Karen Davies Buttercream Mould and some icing fondant.

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I lightly dusted the mould with icing sugar (or you could use cornflour/cornstarch) and then tapped out the excess.

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I then pushed the icing fondant colours into the mould making sure I didn't go over the edges. (You can roll it with a rolling pin if necessary to smooth it out).

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I removed any excess from the centre and around the edges and then peeled the flowers out carefully. You can see from this flower that I used too much blue in the centre so I re-did it using a smaller amount and it came out great. I then used a paintbrush to remove the rough edges of icing fondant from around the flower.

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I then continued using different colours and variations until I had enough flowers for the cake.

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The blue colours I used were Baby Blue and Navy Renshaw Icing.

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Once they were done, I then turned my attention to the buttercream.

I wasn't sure how much buttercream I would need to fill the cakes, so I opted to make two batches just in case I didn't have enough with the first one. In the end, I used one and a quarter batches.

One batch is 250 grams of unsalted butter to 500 grams of icing sugar.

This was then stored in the fridge until required.

The next thing I made was the cakes; these were a 5, 7 and 9 inch, Madeira.

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They were pre-made the day before decoration so that they could be baked, cooled and allowed to settle prior to erection.

Decoration Day:

Each tier was levelled using a cake leveller and then filled with jam and buttercream. I started with the middle tier first because that was the one with the lowest height. Once I had levelled this one, I knew what height the other tiers needed to be so that they were equal to each other.

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I pre-cleaned the cake board with alcohol and then placed a blob of buttercream onto it so that when I put the cake on it, it wouldn't slide.

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The cake was then placed on the board, and the exterior was covered in jam ready for the icing fondant.

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The icing fondant was then rolled to size.

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I then covered the tier with it.

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The excess icing was removed, and the cake was then placed to one side to allow the icing to firm up. I repeated this process with the top tier. However, with the base tier, I covered the board as well.

Now onto the dowels:

Due to the size and weight of the cake, I needed to use dowels to keep the structure of the cake and to stop it from caving in on itself. So I set about inserting my large straws into it to help support the above tiers.

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I pushed the straws into the cake and then snipped them just below the icing so that I could push them in and they would sit properly. I inserted six pieces of straw into the base like so.

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I then put some royal icing on the top so that the next tier/cake board would stick to it.

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The next tier was placed on the top (as shown below), dowelled and covered in royal icing, the top tier was then added.

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I then moved onto the ribbon. I measured it against the cake and then joined it at the front so that you wouldn't see the join at the back of the cake. I stuck this to the cake using royal icing.

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Once the ribbon was done, I then inserted the topper; this was thoroughly cleaned before insertion with neat alcohol. (The alcohol evaporates).

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I then proceeded to attach the flowers using royal icing.

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I trimmed a few of the flowers using pastry cutters; this also gave them a more rounded shape. I continued adding the flowers until the cake was complete.

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This was the back of the cake with just the ribbon showing.

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And this was the front of the cake when I'd finally finished.

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I hope you have enjoyed the tutorial and it inspires you to make your own.

Here is my dear friend Gail with the finished article.

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