Pink, sparkly and with roses please

I've been friends with J for a little over 5 years.  We met via a mother's group, the NCT, for whom I volunteered for 4 or so years.  Her elder daughter is a few weeks younger than Mini-1, and her younger is a few months older than Mini-2 - perfect or what?!  As you may remember, Mini-1 recently had her birthday, as did J's Mini-1.  I couldn't make her birthday cake as she has serious food allergies and I haven't any experience of gluten/dairy/egg free baking (yet).  But her other daughter... well, the request was blue cake with a pink, sparkly top and lots of roses.

Lucky I'd been practising with my new rose mould - and you thought it was all a coincidence, huh!  So the cake baked up well, as it was a recipe I've used successfully before.  After cooling and crumb-coating with icing flavoured and lightly-coloured with strawberry jelly crystals (a technique learnt from my new American cake friends on a Facebook advice group)  I added on the heart and rose-shaped chocolates I'd made earlier in the week.  Et voila!

And here's the happy birthday girl with all the lovely candles in place - it was a Princess costume party and she was Rapunzel.

 And here we see Snow White and Jasmine, ready to join the party!

Chocolate moulding

My friend H had lent me her chocolate moulds, to make teddy, star, moon, duck, castle, Mickey Mouse and so on shapes out of chocolate or even candy melts.  I can't recall why, but on an earlier post she'd offered to and I took her up on that offer.  Then forgot about them for a fortnight or so, oops.  I recently got an order for a friend's daughter's 5th birthday cake and she wants roses on it.  I haven't yet made them out of sugar/flower paste (though I am booked on a course next month to learn), so treated myself to silicone moulds for them, and some cute heart moulds too.

Then last weekend while at the supermarket doing our weekly shop, I saw a little sachet of chocolate that you just put in warm water to melt then pour - I bought a white and milk version to try them out.  I know, I know, it's kind of cheating but hey, it would get the moulds tried out so I could return them to H sooner rather than later.

Here are the teddy and star in H's plastic mould, these turned out shinier (in white chocolate) than the roses and hearts from the silicone mould.  No idea why, perhaps something to do with the material...  A friendly fan on our Facebook page said he sprayed his with PME Glaze, which made them very shiny indeed.  So I think that may be my next purchase...

And on to the finished products.  You will see that I haven't quite got the getting-rid-of-all-the-air-bubbles technique down pat, but I'm trying.  And keen to practice with the yellow and green candy melts we have at home...