However I do have a little something to share with you tonight... a birthday cake idea.
Last week it was my boyfriend's birthday and every year I make a cake for him. Usually I just do a round sponge with white icing and put a picture on it, but this year I decided to do something a bit different.
I printed out a picture of the Manchester United emblem from Google and the name and number in a suitable font from Word. I cut out the characters and used them as a template, placing them on rolled out white icing and using a sharp knife to carefully cut around them. I did the same with the emblem, and used writing icing available in any supermarket for the tiny details, such as the club name and border around the emblem.
For the shape of the cake, I cut out a basic template from an A4 piece of paper, keeping it simple with no tricky corners in the sleeves. After assembling the cake with raspberry jam and butter icing in the middle, I placed the paper on top and cut away the excess cake with a sharp knife. I spread some excess buttercream thinly across the top of the cake and around the sides to enable the royal icing to stick to the cake. I then rolled out the red icing and carefully lifted it onto the cake. I used around 450g of icing to cover the cake, but it was a little too thin, and cracked in a couple of places when it was placed on the cake, so I would definitely recommend using a little more.
All in all, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, as it was my first shaped cake, albeit a simple one.
And it went down pretty well with the man in my life too! (and yes that is how you spell his name... )
Emily Kate.