Birthday in Paradise

Last week I received a call from one of my husband's colleagues asking if I would do a cake for his wife's birthday.  I love getting the opportunity to make someone's birthday extra special, so I of course said yes!  Not to mention, the birthday girl is a dear friend of mine and I know she LOVES my cake!  :)

Other than the fact that the cake had to have lots of icing (the birthday girl's favorite part of the cake), I was pretty much given free reign over the design.  I've never been very good at the typical birthday buttercream roses, so I turned to my favorite cake website, CakeCentral, for ideas.  I quickly decided that I wanted the cake to have a tropical feel since this is the last birthday that my friend will be celebrating in our beautiful island paradise before she and her family move back to the mainland!

The CakeCentral photo galleries gave me a ton of inspiration, but given the fact that we have limited access to cake supplies here on the island and that the cake only needed to be big enough for her family of five, I had to scale back some of the grand ideas I had.  Luckily, I stumbled upon these instructions on making tropical flowers using buttercream.  Making these flowers was super simple and the results are great! 

I keep forgetting to adjust my butter and crisco amounts to compensate for the crazy humidity here in the islands, so my icing was a little softer than I would have liked.  I think a stiffer icing would have made the flowers look even better.  Also, at first I was little unsure about the color combination, but it grew on me after a while.  I think it gave it just the right amount of "tropical flair."

What do you think?

Here's a closer look at the flower:

I spoke with my friend today and she loved the cake; she's down the last piece or so of cake and she's rationing it. Haha!  I'm glad I was able to help her celebrate her last tropical birthday!