Aloha from Brandon, in cake form

After four hours, I have just finished decorating one of the fanciest cakes I've ever done. I'm taking a cake decorating class at Michael's, and although it's a bit basic (they have designed the first course for people who have never before decorated a cake, and there are some in the class like that), I've learned some new things. These include the recipe for white icing that uses vegetable shortening and gets solid without getting hard, how to flatten and torte a cake properly, and how to use some of the odder icing tips in my arsenal. The cake is to celebrate my dad's wedding - I'm planning to show up with it at his house for the pre-wedding fiesta tomorrow. The wedding is Hawaiian themed, and so is the cake. I did the hibiscus in a smooth, colouring-in technique that I'm not sure I'd use again, but it's good to know. What I did learn that was valuable is how to transfer a pattern; you find an outlined pattern, trace it onto parchment, turn that over and trace along its mirror-image with decorating gel (like Dairy Queen uses), and then put that on the top of the cake and press it in with a paint brush. Then when you lift off the paper, it's just a matter of colouring. The palm trees were super fun and let me use some of the tips I've never tried before. Ditto for the grass.The cake itself is butter pecan (mix, I'm ashamed to say), with a rum butter pecan filling.