Have always thought to try my hand at cake decorating but have never gotten around to it despite baking cakes for years. The inspirational push to do so came after the twins came along. Realised it is hard for children to share and thus the urge to learn cupcake making came. With that, the need to decorate those little crowns became unbearable. The birth of my cake decorating attempt came.

I first tried my hand at butter cream icing before proceeding to royal icing. Started with the easier attempt of piping stars and borders before moving to roses as seen on left. Had lots of fun and the kids love it.
The hard part came from trying to create flowers from royal icing as those are really time consuming and not for the faint hearted. Royal icing dries faster than butter cream and require more "strength" to push it out of the piping bag, at least for the novice that I am. With practice came close to perfection and it gets easier as more attempts are made.

The flowers above took me 2 hrs to create in a full air conditioned room so that they dry faster. They could only be attached to the cake after they have dried completely. Was planning to do this for Mother's day this Sunday for my mummy dearest but we shall see if time permits for that many flowers. Final output as seen on left.
In the next few weeks, I will try to make some cakes that are not conventionally round to see just how far I can go for the children's up coming second birthday in June. May just end up sticking to cupcakes as they have a long celebratory weekend up to their actual birthday party with play group and sunday school celebrations.