Shona's Birthday Cake

My baby girl is 20 today....that means I have no more teenagers, just adult children now, what a sobering thought - when did that happen?  Where did those 20 years go, I don't feel a day older than then, but the mirror disagrees.

Anyway, birthday cake time.  What could I do that she might like.

Couldn't decide, and usually I have the idea in my head before hitting the supermarket shelves, but not this time.

Wandering around the baking aisle for inspiration I spotted a Betty Crocker Red Velvet cake mix.  Now, it has to be noted that I never use boxed cake mixes, never needed to as I can easily bash up my own, but for some reason this one looked really nice, and as I needed the whole of my baking cupboard replenished with flour, sugar, baking powder etc.. I ended up thinking it might be a quicker, cheaper and easier option.  So I bought it.

I did the mix in a large cake tin rather than the two sandwich tins that the box suggested to make a deeper cake and I have to say I was well impressed with the amount of cake it yielded as well as the beautifully spongey delicious texture.

I split it and filled it with a thick generous splodge of strawberry jam. Now, just to decorate it.

I bashed up some buttercream (as although on the box of mix the cake is decorated with a rich cream icing, you have to buy that separately) and smothered the sides in it, then I rolled the sides in crushed Gold Bars (Shona's favourite biscuit)

On the top I added popping candy, a chocolate heart lolly-pop and some edible wafer butterflies.

Ok, so it looks like a giant fishcake, it wasn't the golden, sparkly, eye-dazzling display that I had in my head, but it tastes GREAT !