Molly's birthday cake. 7 layers for 7 years!

 I made the cake mix (we all have our favourite recipe, any white cake will do) and split it into 7 bowls, there's only 6 shown here because the 7th wasn't matching... And I put some Sugarflair pink food colouring in. You only need the smallest amount of this colouring, in fact the lightest shade of pink was made by just stirring the spoon from one of the darker ones in it.

 

Then I leveled the cooled cakes off and carefully wrapped them in cling film with a piece of greaseproof paper in between each and froze the whole thing. 

It was all too much for me to handle in one day so I decided to frost it the day after and I've always found it easier to frost frozen cake. I made the buttercream frosting with salted butter, vanilla extract and a dash of milk. I don't know the exact measurements but the consistency was like thick mayonnaise.

I made a lot! I figured I had 7 layers to fill and the crumb coat so more is more in this case. I slapped the darkest layer on the board... And started to frost.

I was really pleased with how smooth I got the whole thing!

 I thought of a great idea! I covered my table with greaseproof paper and dusted it with icing sugar and rolled my icing out on that. I had 1kg of icing which I knew deep down wasn't really enough to cover a cake as tall as this one but being a fool I went ahead and rolled it out anyway.

 And this is what happened :(... The icing was far too thin and just stretched and ripped all over. 

I had the idea of covering all the rips with flowers, I made some big ones and stuck them one and realized that then to make the little ones to cover the gaps and continue the pattern all the way around would take me well into the night. So I gave in and went and bought more icing. 1.5kg this time.

I brushed the cake with boiled jam, by boiled I mean put in the microwave for 30 seconds.

And finally, managed to cover the cake with a smooth layer of icing. I cannot tell you how relieved I was at this point!

I used some of the flowers that I made earlier to put on the top and I made a thin icing ribbon to go around the base.

Here's the birthday girl cutting the cake...

And inside turned out just as I imagined. Phew! It was a great success with all the kids and I still have loads left :D

Her party was horrendously hard work, about 40 kids came all full of energy and eager to run about and explore every cupboard of the church where we held it. Molly got a whole heap (mountain) of presents and I got a lot of pats on the back from other parents who treated me like a brave solider home from the war.