A simple joint birthday cake for my son-in-law and myself, as we are having a family tea, and our birthdays are next door to each other on the calendar.  As my birthday is a bit of a milestone, we had to have cake and my son-in-law loves my rich fruit cakes (well so do I).  If nobody else wants any, we will be quite happy with that - it will be half each!  I must admit my fruit cakes have quite a reputation, and I have had many compliments in the past from chefs, but only the immediate family know the secret!

We both love royal-iced cakes too, but as I had hurt my back (see an earlier post) I couldn't stand to do the icing as it takes a few days, albeit only a few minutes each day, so for once I cheated and used sugarpaste.

We both love sweet peas, so I chose those for the spray on the top, colouring them the same as some I have growing in the garden.

Obviously I couldn't make the cake too feminine, so I discovered a train stencil in my cake stash, and my son-in-law collects model trains, so I stencilled it on to a strip of sugarpaste and attached it to the front of the cake, using the same range of purple colours that I used in the flowers.   To finish the sides of the cake I did scallops of little blossoms.

side front view

a glimpse of one of the scallops around the rest of the side of the cake