A special 40th birthday

Two weeks ago my lovely sister celebrated her 40th birthday!

My sister Barbara is a sophisticated, smart, elegant and beautiful woman and somehow I really wanted this table to represent her. Unfortunately we could not be together as she lives in Italy and she could not make it over here to see what I have planned for her but it was a lovely surprise that we shared through Skype: she was thrilled to see what I made for her! Such a pity she could not taste any of it.

I decided to keep everything black and white and give a touch of color only by adding a bunch of white roses.

The centre piece was a two tiers vanilla cake with a double layer of crème patissiere and forest fruit coulis. The cake was covered in white fondant and decorated with fondant sugar butterflies and edible diamonds.

Bee and I prepared the sugar butterflies well in advance so by the time we had to apply them to the cake, they were dry and took the desired shape. My husband helped me to stick the diamonds to the cake because at one point I got really annoyed as the diamonds kept falling down on the table! See what husbands are for? They remain calm during a baking crisis.

The white rose cupcakes had a vanilla chocolate base and they were covered with simple frosting made of icing sugar and butter.

To make these white chocolate cake pops I actually didn’t use the cakepop maker I recently bought but I followed the instructions from the book “Bake my I’m yours” therefore I baked a cake, crubled it and then added frosting to it. By doing this, the shape of the cake pops is rounder and looks kind of perfect!

To make these flower cake pops I followed the same recipe I used for the butterfly cake pops and I covered them with sugar flowers . Each one was decorated with an edible pearl.

I used Martini glasses to serve these mini Oreo’s cheesecakes. This is a recipe that you can find on my Pinterest.

The taste is pretty sweet but absolutely yummy!

This sugar white rose was my husband’s first attempt at creating a fondant white rose! Pretty good eh?

I ordered some party invitations from the Tiny Prints website. These were a perfect match for this dessert table. The quality of the paper is just amazing and hopefully, through the pictures, you can see that the invitations had a pearlescent finish. Just fab!

I used few apothecary jars which I absolutely love and filled one with meringues, a couple with liquorice and mint candy, one with Oreos and another one with mint candy. I think they look really good on the table.

My husband, who is a graphic designer, was kind enough to create these lovely food cards to place on the table and to hang on the jars. I think they give a classy touch to the table.

I was looking to use a canvas or a print of Audrey Hepburn. Then I decided to use a baroque framed mirror where I stuck an Audrey Hepburn vinyl I bought online. I was quite pleased with the result!