Dawn's birthday - Pistachio petit four cake

It is Dawn's birthday on Saturday; however, as I now work 3 days a week at one place and 2 days a week at another place while I am on secondment, I made her cake for Wednesday at work. I like cakes that give a bit of bang for my buck, so when I saw the Pistachio Petit Four Cake here on Smitten Kitten's site (who in turn found it on Leite's Culinaria), I knew I had to try it. This gorgeous stunner of a cake is from Sky High: Irresistable Triple Layer Cakes by Alisa Huntsman, Peter Wynn and Tina Rupp. I now have the book on order from Amazon, and can't wait to receive it.

Even though this cake looks complicated, it is very simple to make. It consists of 3 layers of pistachio flavoured cake:

with each layer covered with apricot jam, marzipan rounds and ganache:

stacked "sky high" on top of each other:

and covered with more ganache, and decorated with marzipan roses and pistachios:

I used my William Angliss flower making skills to make the marzipan roses. I hated the yellow I tinted the marzipan - I added too much tint, as I was hoping for lemon, not gold. I also liked the more subtle effect of the edible chalks on white better than this solid block of colour. However, I was pleased with the shape of the roses.

I used a slightly different ganache recipe to the original which uses less chocolate, but otherwise, I followed the recipe to a "T".

Verdict: This cake is a visual stunner. It also tastes pleasant enough, although it was not my favourite thing. However, my colleagues, and most importantly Dawn, seemed to like it a lot, and even the crumbs were scooped up.