Testing, Testing, 1,2,3

Hello All!
I know it has been a while.  I have been busy planning a wedding :)  We are to be wed July 20th 2013.  Lots to do in the next 5 1/2 months! 
I will be making my own cake and cupcakes.  The cake will be a dummy cake, so I can have that done in June.  Paul wants the traditional tiered cake sitting there for looks.  I didn't think it would be so hard for me to pick a design.  I looked for about a week straight for ideas.  I think I finally came up with something. 
The one I found has some stencil work on it.  I have never stenciled on a cake before, so I thought I better start practicing!  I haven't baked since Christmas so I thought I would make my favorite chocolate cake.  It has chocolate chips mixed into the buttercream in the middle.

I had some royal icing left over from Christmas.  I mixed it a little to make sure there were no lumps.

I put the stencil on the top of the cake and used my straight edge spatula to smooth on the icing.

Peel off the stencil and I was done!  Not too shabby for the first time :)

I tried the side of the cake.  That was a little trickier.  The stencil was smaller which made it harder to handle and stay in place.

I then made some cake pops from the leftovers.  I thought I would show you the difference between dipping once vs twice in chocolate.

 

I hope you all have a great weekend!

 

Thanks for looking!