Well, I didn’t get a picture of the absolutely finished cake, because of cake vandals but here’s pictures of the BeeDay cake as it neared completion:

1. cake_ bee_ party 012-tweaked, 2. cake_ bee_ party 006, 3. cake_ bee_ party 010, 4. cake_ bee_ party 012

The recipe was a butter chai spice cake with vanilla cream cheese/butter cream icing. It tasted amazing. The flying bees are fondant, the side bees are pressed and painted sugar. The flowers are vanilla royal icing, which dries very hard and so can be transported and put on at the last minute. The butterfly that you can see is a technique called “flow-in sugar”. The butterflies and flowers that you *can’t* see were fondant butterflies that Boy made because he loves his Aunt Debbie. They were final touches and plate decorations. As well, there was a ginourmous fondant rose that was in the center. Seriously huge, it took almost a week to dry, with cotton balls propping up all the petals so that it wasn’t droopy. I’d brushed it with with some edible gold mica. It looked really cool, I wish I’d gotten a picture.

About the cake massacre and cake vandals, it’s best to just remember that some people don’t appreciate anything, and those people will destroy other people’s presents because they think they’re being funny. The HiveMind at MetaFilter had some interesting things to say about it.