This cake was made for a client of mine who has ordered a a few cakes for celebrations. This time she wanted a birthday cake for her daughter and friend who were having a joint cheer leading themed party.

You know, one of the brilliant things about my job is that it is not restricted purely to all things cake related. As with lots of the cakes I make I have learned something new. When my client told me what she wanted I had a vague idea in my head of pom poms and short skirts. That is the gist of it but it is a very serious business in America and teams spend a huge amount of money on outfits, logos, competing and generally out cheering each other.

I decided on making the sides of the cake look like the traditional cheer leading pleated skirt with striping. I did this by first dividing the cake into sections so that I would be able to place the skirt sections onto the cake.

Before applying these I painted the side of the tier with edible silver paint as this would be the layer underneath the skirt. Once this was done I added the skirt sections.

When they were done I began to add the stripes. these were done with strips of white sugarpaste which I painted with silver paint once stuck in place.

The next thing to do was the logo which included the initials of the birthday girls. I wanted a logo in keeping with the cheer-leading logos I found. I used word art to create the right shaped letters and then made templates to cut around.

I traced the All Stars part onto parchment paper and then marked this on the logo by pushing a pin through the parchment along the letter lines. This created pin pricks in the sugarpaste which I could then pipe over. I piped the letters in tiny beads to look like little diamantes or beads (these are a recurring theme in cheer leading logos along with stars).I piped them in white royal icing and then painted them silver.

I edged the logo with a purple strip and put a line of dinky silver stars along the bottom edge.

I had made the wired stars and pom poms at the beginning of the week so that they would harden. I made a hole in the centre of the cake for the wired arrangement to sit in. I used a hollow plastic dowel filled with marzipan which would fit into the hole and hold the wires firmly. the reason I use marzipan for these wired pieces is that it is much firmer than sugarpaste and holds the wired piece upright without any movement.

I think the cake has a real all American cheer leading look to it without being too cheesy.