Red food dye works great on skin...

...but not so much on frosting. > :|  

Seriously.  It looks like I got stabbed in the 4 places where the red dye
 splashed on my arm, but the frosting stayed a resolute
bubblegum pink for the longest time.

Wishing a very happy 21st birthday to my little sis~!  After getting a rough start on the day and a misunderstanding about when I was supposed to tag along with my friend to Costco, I spent almost all day in the kitchen today, 4-6 hours of which were spent on decorating my sister's "refurbished" Darumaka red velvet cake.  My first stint as a cake decorator, and I choose Darumaka.  Smart me.  But ever since I saw this Darumaka cake, I just HAD to make it for her, even if I had no experience whatsoever with cake decorating.  (Spoiler alert:  It's harder and more draining than it seems.  And messy.  Verrrrrry messy. )

So I gathered my supplies...

I wanted a plain cake to decorate, but this was the best that
we could do on such a short notice.  

All ready for decorating!

I must have spent at least 2 hours trying to get the frosting
to not be a violent shade of bubblegum pink.  Ended up using
ALL of the red dye in the bottle!  -_-

Although not the exact shade of red that I wanted, this was
the best that I could do, so on it went!

So many mishaps and near disasters.  Had to
redo the right eye and the placements of the
yellow spots, some parts of the black piping

Inner thoughts:  "Please let this not end up on Cakewrecks,
please don't let this end up on Cakewrecks...!"

DONE!  Now for the candles... 

...and it's almost time to surprise the birthday girl~!

-------------------------------------------

OUTTAKES:  

ah, the casualties of cake decorating.

Like I said, verrrrrry messy.  It's not in my nature to be so slovenly,
but I made up for it by cleaning it all up very efficiently.  = w =