Twin Brothers

I have something of an affinity for flood-fill patterns, but royal icing takes to long and chocolate is really restrictive colour-wise. Having read up on buttercream transfers, I decided this was the right opportunity to test my newly-acquired knowledge.

Since the pattern is very yellow, I decided to go for a theme, so I made a lemon drizzle cake with lemon buttercream icing. After decimating the lemon population of my kitchen, I had a lemon cake in the oven and the drizzle standing by (note: the worst time to remember you have a paper-cut on your finger is 5 seconds after you've started juicing a lemon). The recipe called for 30-40 minutes in the oven, so I got understandably concerned when I smelled something burning after 15. After the allotted 30 minutes were up, the cake was looking decidedly brown, but salvageable (with judicious use of a breadknife). Once the lemon drizzle had been drizzled, it was ready for decoration.

I flipped and greyscaled the original image and taped it to some cardboard, then covered that with parchment. I mixed up a sizable batch of buttercream, dyed it the appropriate colours and readied my piping bag. Since there were no outlines, I just did every colour separately and put the whole thing in the freezer to set regularly. Once the whole pattern was piped (and set), I covered the whole thing in more yellow buttercream and put it back in the freezer.

Back to the lemons! Another lemon was sacrificed for the lemon buttercream, which I then dyed yellow to match the transfer. I thinly coated the top of the cake, then attempted to transfer the buttercream decoration.
Problem.
Seems my kitchen was a tad too warm and the buttercream transfer started to come apart when I tried to pull the parchment away (no photos of that as I was a tad stressed at the time). This time the entire cake went into the freezer, transfer and parchment still attached, until it was set sufficiently to hold its shape. Luckily, it worked on my second attempt and then it was just a matter of filling in any gaps and making sure it was all nice and smooth.

Since even I can't put away that much cake in one sitting, I brought it into work to share. Once I'd convinced my co-workers I wouldn't murder them for cutting into the pretty pattern, it was very much enjoyed