Sweet 16 Cake

So this cake was our first ever hexagon cake, which you can find my already math-ed out tutorial on cutting squares into hexagons here:

http://greenzebra9.blogspot.com/2013/06/turning-square-cakes-into-hexagon-cakes_14.html

The flowers are my gum paste skills sneaking into the cake lineup again, which I did using absolutely no tools except Reynolds wrap.  Want to know how I managed that?  Well it just so happens I blogged on that too:

http://greenzebra9.blogspot.com/2013/06/gum-paste-cherry-blossoms-creative.html

Anyway you need to make the gumpaste at least a day in advance, preferably about two.  It gives it plenty of time to dry, and it is much more reliable than fondant in my opinion.

I really hate fondant for the record.

The letters are chocolate, and the 16 is actually a candle covered in the same chocolate that the letters were done in.  Which makes it the right color, AND totally useful for the whole, ya know, birthday part of all this.

I used a small star tip to pipe some scallop-esque shapes around the top of each layer as that really helped fill it out and tie it all together.

The flowers were put on with dabs and piles of icing to make them stay where they needed to be. 

The colors matched the pallet of the party which was light pink, dark pink, orange, and aqua.

I used a larger round tip to pipe dots around the bottom, pressing in any little peaks that were leftover.

The bottom is a 12, the next an 8, and the top a 4.5 square (turned hexagon).

Happy crafting!