I’m not sure if I’ve chosen the right name for this cake, but the soft shades of rippled buttercream icing gently blending from one colour to the next remind me of a lovely watercolour painting.

It was my middle daughters birthday recently, and I looked at way too many photos of beautiful cakes. Then I made the even worse mistake of showing the pictures to the birthday girl. It was a miracle we could decide on what sort of cake to attempt!

We decorated the top with Rafaello chocolates, and some scrumptious looking (and tasting!) blueberry macarons I bought at our local Farmers Market that morning. We had a go at making pretty chocolate shards, which worked out quite well, but most certainly did not like hanging out next to eleven lit candles as we sang ‘Happy Birthday’!

I piped some extra buttercream icing on top to add a bit of interest, and to hold the decorations in place. Icing makes an excellent glue! And the final touch was some large and small white nonpareils sprinkled around for good measure.

I like tall cakes for celebrations, so this one was made up of three  8″ cakes layered with different colours of buttercream icing. I wish I had taken a photo of the inside, it looked so pretty and matched the outer colours, with violet on the bottom layer, electric blue in the middle, and teal between the top two layers of chocolate cake.