Silver Ombre Cake

A silver anniversary is quite a milestone, which means it requires a bit more pomp than an everyday celebration. While big blowout parties might be ideal for some couples, my aunt and uncle preferred a more low-key, intimate dinner with their close family and friends in the home they've built together.

Unlike the many holiday family dinners my aunt hosts each year, this dinner party in honor of her anniversary was a more formal affair. Rather than cooking all the party food herself, she hired a private caterer to take care of the menu.

While the caterer certainly went all out with dessert, I wanted to do something special for my aunt and uncle. They're big fans of my chocolate cake, so I made a short tiered one for them. I couldn't just frost with my usual buttercream and call it a day though - I wanted to decorate this anniversary cake in a special way.

Like me, my aunt's constantly on Pinterest, and one trend I noticed we both love is the "ombre" effect. I'm not sure how this trend started, though I'm pretty sure it went crazy with nail polish, but it's popular right now and I love it. More importantly, my aunt does, too.

The idea is to work color in a fade-effect - so, going from dark to light to lighter. Since this was a 25th anniversary cake, silver was the clear color choice.

In order to personalize the cake without taking away from the color, I opted to use MyMMs to decorate. Using their silver, shimmer platinum and shimmer pearl colors I worked a layered look around and up the cake. This project required 3 1lb bags to complete. There were enough M&Ms left over for our small dinner party that I was able to wrap the extras in tulle and attached a tag with the number 25 on it. These were placed at everyone's setting around the table.

Three rows of silver, three of shimmer platinum and then a top rimmed in shimmer pearl, the cake turned out so beautifully. As great as it looks in the photo here, it was even more gorgeous in person.

Both my aunt and uncle got a kick out of the small "25s" that covered the cake. I applied the M&Ms while watching a game the night before the big dinner party - it took all of an hour or so to get the entire cake decorated, but what a show-stopper it turned out to be!

This idea was sponsored by MyM&Ms.com.