My First Cake Order!

A fellow at work has commissioned me to make his mother's birthday cake next week. I can't tell you how excited I am. It will be a french vanilla cake with a Bavarian Cream filling. The outside with be piped heirloom-ish roses all over. Here is what I proposed to him:

Except he wants purple roses.

Now this is a piped job, and I am not the best piper. This design appears to be pretty straight forward though. The good news is that if it looks bad, I can wipe it clean and start again until I get it right...hopefully. I, of course, have to go out and get the correct piping tip for this design, and perhaps a few pasty bags. There are some things that I am still holding out for. I just feel like I cannot justify the expense, although a turntable would certainly bring down my stress level and help with getting an ultra smooth buttercream finish. I keep hoping someone will get it for me as a gift, but what will probably end up happening is that I will buy it with the money that I get from this cake job.

Last night, I began work on the Guinness cake. I worked on it for more than 4 hours yesterday and my back is killing me today.

The culprit

I started by using an Exacto knife to cut out the paper template. Then, I tried to use the paper template to cut the fondant out. The problem is that the fondant is so pliable, that it just didn't hold its shape. After attempting this several times, I figured out that this was just not going to work. I panicked for awhile trying to figure out how I was going to pull this off. There may have been weeping involved.

Upon closer examination of the picture, it appeared to me that the lettering might be piped in white chocolate. I had part of a white chocolate block laying around so I decided to try this method. I pulled out my marble cutting board, taped the logo down, then taped a piece of plastic wrap tightly over the paper stencil. I melted some white chocolate and poured it into a piping bag. People that do this all the time, must have hands of steel, because it was HOT! I nipped the tiniest corner off the end of the piping bag and went to work. The picture is crappy, but I think that I at least have a method to achieve this cake.

Guin...

 The letters are super delicate and brittle, but fairly simple to reproduce it they break. I had to keep heating the chocolate over and over as it tended to glop up as it cooled. I redid a few of the uglier letters, but managed to pipe the whole thing last night. It's in the fridge hardening right now. The black fondant should be delivered any minute now, so that will wrap up the hard work on this cake. Then I can focus on the rose cake above, the one I'm truly nervous about.