Cake Time: Ruby Wedding Anniversaries

One day in September after work I met my family in the local pub where they had been having tea for my cousin’s birthday. No one thought to wait for me, by the way, or even order me a plate of chips. Or dessert. Rude.

Anyway, my Mum took along Rosie’s birthday cake and there it was sitting at the opposite end of the table minding its own business. Then there was a kerfuffle and the waitress who was clearing up, after much conspiring with my aunties, was making her way down to my end of the table. Apparently she was desperate for a cake and at this point any old cake baker would do.

She wanted a ruby anniversary cake for her parents at quite short notice and lucky for her I had just the thing!

Here's one I made earlier...

This might seem like being unimaginative but we'd already done this cake for a different anniversary and it worked really well. Keeping it simple but pretty and elegant. I think when we did this one we managed to get a nice balance: you don't want it to look like a wedding cake but it still needs to be something special.

And nice waitress lady loved the cake so we got to do it again!

My mum ended up making the sugar flowers for both of these cakes - I think the division of labour meant it just fell on her both times but she is the experienced pro and can do them twice as fast (and better) than me.

I love doing cakes likes this in amongst all the children's and character cakes and I would love to use sugar flowers more often. High up on my to do list is teaching myself how to more than just roses! Watch this space!

We made just a few changes to the designs when we did it the second time: we lost the hearts that had been a request the first time, used red ribbon on each tier instead of white, and changed the lettering on the board as per each request.

I still haven't quite got the technique for piping lettering round a board yet! It doesn't seem to flow round very well.(*adds to to do list*) but as the main focus was my mum's pretty sprays I tried not to get too upset about it.

Here's to many more years for the happy couples!

Vicky xx