rose cake

The JP and I celebrated seven years of marriage on Sunday! We actually had a date night Friday night, but we wanted to make Sunday special too since it was our actual day. JP remained true to his cooking passion and did it up right! Salad, steak, crab cakes, a little wine and...CAKE! The steak was seriously good and in the words of JP, "This steak is so beautiful I just want to take a picture of it."

And he did.

I know. It's huge. I couldn't even finish mine and that's saying something.

I'm surprised he didn't take a picture of the inside of it because he probably talked about the perfect color pink and the fine line between brown and pink for a solid 3-4 minutes. I usually don't like any pink on my steak but I'll admit, this steak tasted superb.

I was pretty proud of my contribution to the dinner. I had seen this idea on the blog i am baker (which I absolutely love, by the way - if you like baking at all you need to check her out!). She keeps making me add things to my "want to try this" list.

So, here is how mine turned out:

Pretty cool, huh? The inside is red velvet. It tasted pretty good, but I'm still looking for a red velvet recipe that will make my taste buds throw a party.

Also, it would be prettier had I made sure I had enough red food coloring. This is more like "pink velvet".

I was so nervous when I started piping the flowers. Seriously. I stood there for a good minute, piping bag in hand and pointed at the side of the cake, staring at it like I was trying to aim at a moving target. I don't know why, it's actually very easy. I guess maybe it's the perfectionist in me.

You can tell it's not perfect by far. The roses are all different sizes. I think I can attribute that to the fact that I was more worried about making the rose look like an actual rose than I was about how big it was. I think if I had a go at this cake one or two more times that I could make it look the way I want it to. However, I'm happy with this first attempt and now I can't wait for a special occasion so I can make it again.