Happy Birthday Song Cake

This past week was Frank's birthday so I thought that I would share the cake I made for him last year.

I made a chocolate cake using the recipe for Beatty's Chocolate Cake and then made a chocolate ganache filling between the layers. To cover the cake I made rolled buttercream icing in chocolate and vanilla. I rolled out the vanilla, cut a strip of it and placed it across the middle of the cake. I then did the same for the chocolate and used it to cover the top and bottom.

With a base of icing on the cake I set about decorating it. Using icing that I tinted black, I piped five parallel lines across the cake to make a music staff. I looked up the sheet music for the happy birthday song online and then piped the notes for the song onto the music staff, writing the words "Happy B-Day Dear Frank" under the corresponding notes.

To finish off the cake I added a little color by tinting some icing blue and using it to add a border above and below the music and then piped blue stars along the base.

Trying to use rolled buttercream to cover the cake instead of fondant was quite a challenge, and it wasn't as smooth as fondant, but it tasted really wonderful. The rolled buttercream is so soft that it really wasn't feasible to deal with very large sections and the only way I was able to manage it was doing in the three sections that I did. The taste made it worthwhile though, and it is definitely something that I'll have to try again.