Madeira Cake and Sugarpaste:

Felt the need to step up my game with regards to the girl’s birthday cakes, so this is my first attempt at using sugarpaste.  Wasn’t sure whether a Victoria Sponge could take the weight of the icing (read somewhere that in the absence of marzipan, do two layers of sugarpaste to get a smooth finish), so I also tried my hand at a denser Madeira Sponge for the first time.  Overall, I was quite pleased with the look of the cake for a first go (using PME blossom and butterfly cutters for the decorations), but definitely a few lessons learned:

1) Try and roll the icing much thinner next time – the sheer quantity on this cake made it sickly sweet and the decorations could have been made to look much more elegant than chunky

2) I obviously, need much more practice at mastering a Madeira sponge as the actual cake was akin to eating house bricks

So, regrettably it was not the best eating experience.  However as they say, nothing ventured nothing gained.