Lilac and Pink Birthday Cupcakes

I am feeling very spring-like this week, the sun is shining, lambs are bouncing around the fields and fresh colours are appearing all around! I made this cupcake tower for Philippa's mother's 60th Birthday celebration on Sunday. My brief was that the cake should comprise 150 British style cupcakes with Madagascan vanilla sponge, topped with fondant icing in lilac colours with half of the cupcakes decorated with sugar flowers and the other half plainly iced with a little sparkle! The top tier cutting cake was a ginger cake filled with lemon buttercream. I iced the top tier using lilac sugarpaste which was then hand piped with royal icing dots in the same colour, I topped the cake with a mixture of loose and tight pink sugar roses which I interspersed with sugar pearls.

The celebration took place in Surrey and the cake was collected by a family member so I don't have any photographs of it set up in-situ but I constructed the cake using half of the cupcakes in my studio to photograph it to give you an idea of how it looked!

The smooth, swirled fondant gives a really pleasing effect I think:

Many thanks to Philippa and her father for ordering the cake from iced (despite being based so many miles away!) and to Mike for recommending iced to them. It was an absolute pleasure to make! Wishing Philippa's mum a very happy 60th birthday!