Mother's Day Cake

On Sunday, we had both our moms over for a special Mother's Day dinner. I'm the type of person who loves, loves planning dinner parties. I did my usual over-reaching: making fresh baguettes for the garlic bread (when no one would have minded store-bought) and developing my own salad dressing recipe just for the occasion (and making my poor husband taste test spoonfuls of it in the process). But for me, that's toned down. I stuck to making only one entree, even. That's because I wanted to make sure everyone saved room for cake. This Mother's Day dinner, the cake was the star of the show.
I've wanted to try my hand at cake decorating for a while now. I bought a few pastry tips and practiced with some cupcakes, but I've mostly avoided actual cakes up until now because it seemed so overwhelming. Fondant and gumpaste are foreign words to me. Where to even start? Then I saw this fabulous tutorial for making a rose cake and knew it would be perfect for my first decorated cake. That's because it's so deceptively simple.

I used this buttercream recipe for my cake, which I unfortunately over-whipped, causing my roses to be all air-bubbly. To get the purple color, I used a food coloring mist (like spray paint for cakes). I chose purple because it's my mom's favorite color.

Overall, it was a great dinner, and the moms loved their cake. Hope everyone out there had an excellent Mother's Day!