"Twenty Five" Cake

My parent's twenty-fifth anniversary was this past Tuesday and I wanted to do something awesome to help them celebrate. Naturally, this turned into a project of epic proportions.
I've been a little obsessed with Pinterest, lately and I came upon this Martha Stewart theme for a numbered-themed birthday party. I really loved their cake idea and with a few modifications, I made it into something more anniversary appropriate and perfect for my parents. I used my own recipes for cake and nixed the m&ms idea because I was afraid the colors in the candy would run. I made two sheet cakes, one for each number. For my mother, I made a chocolate cake with a creamy chocolate frosting. This is my all time favorite chocolate cake recipe and it's from Baking Illustrated. I've made this cake several times, in cupcake form, layer cake form, and it's original intention, a sheet cake. Everything about the recipe stayed the same, you just need to change the timing in the oven a bit. Seriously, I cannot say enough good things about this cookbook and if you're in the market for a baking book with all the basics/ classics, this is the one.
For my father, I made his favorite cake, red velvet. I took the recipe from here- it's a mock Magnolia Bakery Cake Recipe- with cream cheese frosting.

After baking the sheet cakes, I printed out these templates from Martha Stewart, stuck them on the cake, and then used a knife to shave the cakes into the desired shape.

After cutting sheet cakes, but before icing

I thought cutting them would be harder than it actually was- all my awesome Xacto skills from FIT, I guess :) The icing was actually the hardest part. It was very difficult to make them look smooth and also  get enough icing on everything. I really like how they turned out, in the future, I think I might make my own patterns, I think this is a really nice idea, though!

Finished project!

My lovely parents posing with the cake