Two-Tier Rose Cake (Attempt 1...)

Last week I came across a beautiful 3-tiered cake decorated with cascading roses in my newest cake decorating book (£1 from the M&S sale, very much worth looking out for!) and thought it would be lovely to make for guests we're expecting at the end of the month. I wanted to practice it first, as I had grand ideas of a two tiered cake, with different flavour sponges and buttercreams, with a beautiful display of fondant roses. It was just as well I did because I'm a baking novice and as such encountered several hitches along the way, all of which lead to a less-than-perfect looking cake :( But at least I know what to improve for the real thing I guess! Namely;

- Do NOT forget the Marzipan. (I said I was a novice!) I completely missed this out from both the ingredient list and method, and it was only when I came to add the royal icing that it  seemed like icing the cake was a lot harder than it should be. I was right. As a result the icing didn't quite stick to the cake as well as it should have, and you can see where the sponge cakes are sandwiched together. It doesn't look good.

- Remember that baking a small cake means adjusting the cooking time. I forgot to do this and as a result my "strawberry" tier tasted predominately of overcooked cake.

- Make sure the cakes are level before applying the icing. Yet another rookie mistake and this caused a fondant rose to roll off the top of the cake, land in the middle of the previously smooth icing leaving a big dent and then proceeding to fall (and smash) on the floor.

I'm disappointed with the overall look of the cake (and didn't really want to upload the photo to my blog, but It's a learning curve right?) but not to get too disheartened by it, I was pleased with how the roses turned out - it took me an entire evening to make them all and it took a while to get a technique going, but I don't think they look too bad for my first attempt at making roses, and I do like the colour of them too. I also made a strawberry buttercream for the top tier cake and luckily that turned out very nicely and added some flavour back to the cake!

So, here it is...hopefully the second attempt will look a lot better!

(And yes the picture is small in a vain attempt to minimize the obviousness of the awful icing...I know it doesn't succeed however!)