My first decorated cake and a splash of ganache

Paige let me create some mini-cakes, including one for me to decorate as I pleased (because I'd be the one eating it). She baked the layers, but let me construct the cake and choose the filling — chocolate and cherries of course. Once the layers were stacked, I had to frost them in buttercream so that it was smooth all over. This is actually frustratingly difficult. You don't want to frost it too thick, but sometimes smoothing out a part that is thin will end up having cake showing through. To fix it, you add more and have to smooth it again, which makes another part have cake peek through. Grrr. After frosting six cakes, I was finally getting better at it, but I still need to practice a lot more. She told me to go crazy with the decorating so I can get a feel of how it works, so please excuse the tackiness of swirls, dots, daisies and roses all in one cake. I'm fully aware that it is a major design faux pas, but I wanted to try a variety of things. I promise that my future cakes will look nothing like this, instead they will be awesome! The rose is the one that I made the day before. I'm actually pretty happy with it. So here's the final result:

 

After the cake was done, we got a rush order for some football-shaped cookies. Paige had to whip up a batch of football shortbread cookies since we were all out. Once those came out of the oven, she let me dip them in ganache (a chocolate/cream mixture) which was a lot of fun. We managed to get them done by the deadline. Hooray!