Diamond Jubilee cake ... fit for a queen!!

How are the Diamond Jubilee celebrations going?  I'd love to hear how you've marked the day wherever you may be living.

Here in Germany, as a joke, I remarked how there wouldn't be any street parties. It was here that the idea was born to hold our own garden party with the local Brits!   Excitement is an understatement! I'll be blogging about that in the next couple of days!

I set up a facebook event page to invite people and get the information out there.  One daily posting on there was of this picture of a crown cake that the royal cake maker made.

Royal Cake Maker crown cake - Daily Mail

My question was ... who can make this for our centrepiece?? No one came forward!! So I just went on with other postings getting everyone warmed up for the day.  My initial suggestion of who could make this cake was thrown back at me ..."Michelle - have a go!!"  I don't really enjoy being in kitchen. EEk!! I always used to joke I would have to marry a chef ... and guess what?  Yup! I did!! Anyway I got all brave and decided to attempt it.  If all else failed we would have a lot of victoria sponge that could end up in trifle!! haha.

I got to work and made 4 individual victoria sponges to layer up and filled the layers with butter cream and jam filling.

Look how messy it looks!! I told you ... baking, cooking ... the process is no joy for me!! =) I was so embarressed at how messy it looked that I wanted to get it iced as quickly as I could so my hubby wouldn't see the imperfections MESS!  In all of my rushing (which I think is my main problem!) it turned out an even bigger mess.  Please note I have only iced one other cake in my entire life before so I am new to all of this.  Are you hearing my excuses? I had used ready icing (the roll out stuff) and it was too dry, broke up and cracked ... yuck!! 

Then to cover up the disaster of that, I decided if I stuck on mini marshmallows on top of the fondant - it could look better .... mistake number 5,000.

Look ....

I took this pic on my iPad so it isn't such good quality.  Please don't laugh ... too much! Oh never mind ... just laugh!! I can now!! What's the first thing that pops into your head?? Diamonds maybe?  No I didn't think so - independently hubby & I both thought it looked like a tea pot and hubby even thought the marshmallows added the effect of a tea cosy! How creative of me!! 

At this point I wanted him to say it's GREAT .. it'll go down a treat. He didn't!! The silence and deep thought was telling me realistically this cake couldn't go to our jubilee party dressed like this!! 

The next morning I called a British friend who is a cake maker and we went into crisis talks.  I knew I could do it better if I could just get hold of purple food colouring paste.  I wonder if you can find this stuff over here?  Anyhow we met at her son's school, me on bike with wet hair ... desperate!! She has a treasure trove of food colouring pastes and goodies!! I dashed home, stripped the cake back to the sponge and re-buttercreamed it.

I smoothed it all off and placed it in the fridge for a while.

I then got to start on my marshmallow fondant.  I followed a youtube video that I found last year.  Here it is and it makes the most wonderful stuff to cover a cake with.

Here is the link to the video on how to make it!

After following these instructions and adding the purple paste ... I arrived at this stage ...

Great eh?  Except i didn't want an octopus! =)  I was starting to feel a lot more confident at this point.  And so continued to trim and smooth the fondant and then made the gold stuff the same way; and decorated some more.

We are starting to take shape!! Now I am feeling extremely happy!!

Then I could add the fun bits ...

This is the finished result ......

What do you think?

You know what I learned all through this?  Is not to give up, not to settle for just OK and mostly as I was reflecting on my first attempt and my disappointment, was how blessed I am to have my hubby and how grateful I am that he doesn't just say things like 'Oh it's fine!!' so that he doesn't hurt my feelings.  Rather that he is on my side - always to make me realise I am better than I think I am and help me achieve more than I think is possible.  He could have jumped in at anytime and made something much better I am sure.  But he didn't, he helped me to grow and achieve something. It's not perfect but you know it doesn't matter.  Everyone loved it and it was worth all of the effort!!

And ... it even tasted good! That's a bonus right?? 

Have you had any failures and successes with baking? Please share! =)