I've been wanting to try a topsy turvy cake for awhile now and was excited to get the chance to do so. I completely understand how to do the topsy turvy cake but found it a little bit more tricky to do than I had expected! The design is modified from a cake done by Pink Cake Box. I'm happy with it for my first attempt at a topsy turvy cake, although I have certainly received some odd (and non-complimentary!) comments about this one!

This is a chocolate cake with a caramel-butterscotch buttercream covered in a caramel-flavored fondant. It's for a small get together so it is only a 6" cake on the bottom with a 4" cake on top and I think the small size is one of the things that made it more difficult to put together.

The curly Q's on the top are made with fondant as are the stripes, dots and lettering on the cake board. I really do like the bright colors on this one - so cheery!

In my class, we were supposed to be doing blown sugar the night I did this... but there were only three air pumps and fourteen people so I decided to play until I could try out the blown sugar. Since I've made gumpaste flowers, I tried pulling pieces of sugar to look like the petals I roll out in gumpaste to see how it would work.

It was also the first time I had ever used an airbrush and I found it tricky to color each piece without running on to the adjoining pieces. I totally screwed up the calla lily which is at the bottom left of the piece. You can't even tell it is a calla lily at this point! The flower at the top is (obviously?) a rose, a daffodil in the centre and a tulip on the bottom right side.

In this week's class, we did pastillage which I had expected to be easy since I've worked with gumpaste and they are somewhat similar.... however, it's not so easy. The individual pieces have to dry for 3 days before you can assemble them so next week we'll see if I managed to make anything at all resembling the piece I was aiming for!

I've been wanting to try this recipe out for quite some time so a work potluck lunch provided the perfect opportunity. I had made a gumpaste peony and happened to have a can of bronze lustre spray and decided that I thought this would make an interesting effect.

The base layer was a chocolate sponge cake topped with a layer of dark chocolate mousse and then a layer of white chocolate mousse. I sprinkled chocolate shavings on the top of the cake and added a few gold wild roses and some silver leaves for a total metallic design.

Many people weren't able to make it to the event so I had expected leftovers but there wasn't so much as a crumb left on the plate so I think it's safe to say the recipe was a success. Now I'll start looking for an excuse to make a chocolate/ passion fruit combination....