- a woodland wedding cake -

The final crowning point of the baking and pastry course is over. The last week and a half I've been busy working on this cake, spending hours upon hours molding tiny sugar paste flowers, making chocolate paste, rolling it into a basket shape, staying up late sculpting those two deer out of sugar paste, the list is endless. Everything you're seeing is made out of some variation on sugar.

We were given a neck tie as our theme. We used the tie's pattern as inspiration to come up with our finale cake design. Conveniently my neck tie's pattern was quite folky, with a woodland, earthy, floral pattern - which lended itself to creating a cake that was fit in perfectly with the style of things I like to create.

The cake itself was another experiment, but it ended up being incredibly delicious. I made a simple white cake, but a bit of orange zest in it, and then I soaked each layer with elderflower liqueur which gave the cake a lovely light and floral taste. I then stacked each layer with a tart cranberry ginger filling, and iced the whole thing with vanilla bean buttercream!

It was my first time really trying elderflower liqueur and I pretty much want to put it onto everything now - so good!