9 Month Anniversary Cake

9 Month Anniversary Cake, originally uploaded by Kelsie <3.

Happy 9 Month Anniversary to Josh and Emily!

I had a lot of fun making this cake, which Josh asked me to make last week as a surprise gift for his girlfriend. It's amazing to think that just 24 hours ago, this cake was only two layers of vanilla cake cooling on the counter. Look at it now!

I was really pleased with how classy and elegant this cake looked. I wasn't really sure at first how to go about things... all I knew was that I needed a pink cake with flowers on it to be delivered after church tonight.

So I perused Cake Central, and saw a pretty 50th anniversary cake with all the swirls, which is partly my inspiration. By the way, I freehanded all the scrolls with a #3 tip. I just kind of went by what was in my head more than any set pattern or any pictures that I saw. The dots/pearls are either #3 or #5, I can't remember which.

The green is actually left over from the Advent cake that was still in the freezer, but I added some juniper green icing paste to make the color less spring-y (something that bothered me a teeny tiny bit when it was used for the wreath).

I owe a lot to Katie for the flowers. Originally, I was going to do dark pink or yellow flowers, and probably fondant ones too, but Kate convinced me to make white buttercream flowers. (She says the buttercream ones look prettier, but I'm not so good at making them.) The gold dust came later when I was testing a rose, just to see how it looked. Well, it looked gorgeous, so I colored the other roses just the same. For the final touches, I added some green leaves, and, ta-da! I was done!

(Secret tip: instead of using a blob of piped icing for the roses' centers, I used Hershey's kisses. Yummy!)

I really hope that Emily loves the cake as much as Josh did when I gave it to him. He was so excited! I'm really glad that he asked me to help him celebrate doing what I love best! ;-) And just like the cake says, "Happy 9 Months!"