Trial Cake

On Monday I wrote about starting some of the prep work for Bianca's birthday party.  I know it is still a little while, but from experience I've learned that if I leave things till the last minute, they have a habit of going all wrong.  And in fact I was reminded of this when I was doing Caitlyn's birthday cake in February.  Not a good feeling when you suddenly realise at 11pm the night before the party that things are not going as you hoped. 

Bianca is hoping to have a Harry Potter birthday party and we saw this really cool cake.  A big book with a wizard's hat on top and so I just knew I was going to have to make a trial cake.

Here it is:

The book isn't too bad.  Although I forgot to cut the bottom one completely flat so it doesn't sit as nice as a book could.  And I think the book cover really needs to be thicker.  The hat is supposed to be black, but I ran out of black colouring so this one is this dark grey colour.  And the actual one won't have stars but because of the dark grey, I painted this on just to make it look a bit nicer.  I will also have to remember to shape it a bit better to better represent a wizard hat and unfortunately I ran out of icing, but the rim definitely needs to be wider.  But for a first attempt I think it is good.  And as long as it tastes good then that's all that matters.

So there it is, my first attempt at Bianca's cake.