Mom's Tulip Cake

This is my mother's birthday cake for this year. It starts with a basic vanilla cake recipe, one that I will share tomorrow. Then the cake was iced with "margarine milk" icing by my father. My mother prefers this icing, which is a specialty of my father, as opposed to my buttercream. Personally, I am more familiar with (and more fond of) buttercream, but this is my mother's cake, not mine, and this is what she requested. This is why my father made the icing and iced the cake. However, I did all of the piping and decorations. Normally I would do this with buttercream, as it is stiffer and easier to pipe and to work with, but there was just enough leftover margarine milk, so I used that.

My mother really likes tulips, and that is the only request she had for the decorations on her cake. We aren't fondant or gum paste fans here, so I tried to find a way to make tulips using margarine milk icing. If you can make buttercream roses, why not margarine milk tulips? It wasn't as difficult as I though, I just used my flower petal tip, and made three lines as tulip petals. I decorated the top of the cake with one big and several small tulips, then I put four on the side of the cake as well. The top border is a simple flower border using my drop flower tip. The bottom border is a ruffle border using my petal tip again. I piped "Happy Birthday Dianne" with my mother's name as requested. All of this was done in my mother's favorite color, light pink. Then I added some leaves with a light green icing and my leaf tip. It didn't take very long, and is quite simple, but that's the way my mother likes it.
 Happy Birthday Mom! :)