Let them eat cake!

So, I've created two decorated cakes in my entire life. It all began when the airman first class in my office was being promoted to senior airman. It's an automatic promotion once you've been in the air force long enough and most people don't look at it as a "real" promotion. I, however, wanted to celebrate Kenny's promotion and asked him what he wanted. He replied a "cake, in the shape of my rank." Whaaaaaaa?????? I thought long and hard about how to create his cake and finally got an idea. I baked three different cakes. Two rectangle and one circle and cut them into the appropriate shape. I also bought a star cookie cutter to make the center shape (cause I don't know many people who can free-hand a perfect star). I also only used a star tip to decorate with, because stars are easy to do and I really had no idea what I was doing. OK, well enough background...here was the final result. Lots and lots of cake (just compare the size of the cake to the size of the table)...enough to share with the entire unit. We celebrated his promotion in style...with this cake. I was pretty pleased with the final result.So my second cake was finished last night. A couple in my Bible study is having their first child and we're all getting together tonight for our weekly lesson. The preggers couple does not know that we're throwing them a shower tonight as well. Before I could catch myself, I volunteered to make a cake. Some quick Internet research made me want to make this cake. Thus, my cake adventure began. First off, the couple is having a boy, so I was not going to put bright pink on the cake (like the one in the example). I also prefer the whipped icing over butter cream, so I iced the cake with whipped icing (with more powdered sugar added to make the icing stiffer). The baby-mama likes chocolate, so I made a chocolate cake. Here's the cake cut to size (note that it's going the opposite direction from the original...that was an oops that I could have easily fixed by rotating the buggy, but the cake broke in transit from the pan to the cardboard so I left it as-is).I've never done a basket weave before, and I think my first attempt was OK. Especially since I was really using an icing that's not made for decorating a cake. I still don't have any idea what I am doing, but I had tons of fun.
Here's the final product and I think it's super cute. I had convinced myself that if the cake was too embarrassing that I would go buy a sheet cake from a local grocery store bakery. I think we'll eat this one :-)I had originally intended on making the cake blue and green, but the green turned out looking like puke next to the blue, so blue and white it stayed. I only left back a little of my white icing for touch ups and I didn't have enough to pipe stars in the white places. It would have made it look more complete, but time was ticking away and my back was sore from bending over the cake for so long. I know, I am getting old! Just look at the nasty green color on the beaters, it really did look awful next to the blue.....(and look at the mess I made in my kitchen!)And just for kicks and grins, I'll add the cake I made for Mackie's birthday a couple of weekends ago. I made this cake completely from scratch, including the icing and roasted pecans, so there was not much decorating. But it was yummy!