I have been asked to decorate a cake with a scene from cuba with my friend proposing to his now fiancee. HELP i have no idea how to start this he mentioned trees and her being on a deckchair with him on bended knee! Any ideas how best to go about this? Gratefully appreciated xx

If you can hand mold people than it should be ok. I would say paint pictures of familiar cuban scenes on the cake with palm trees to frame them and put a few palm trees on the top next to her on her chair and him proposing. MAke the top tier look like a white wooden porch deck like in old cuban hotels (with strips of white fondant). And the chair a dark wood color.

Here is a site: http://www.carilat.de:80/havannacoast.htm
It has a panoramic view of Cuba that is beautiful.

http://search.live.com/images/results.aspx?q=Cuba&mkt=en-US#focal=bbf60cc88c38f3b32d992e2cd0c33537&furl=http%3a%2f%2fdevos.typepad.com%2fcuba%2fimages%2fus_cuba.jpg

And that other site has a lot of smaller images that maybe you can take a little something from, like a beach scene or a fort.

Just throwing out ideas to try to help.

I'm Cuban and more elements you could include to encompas a Cuban theme would be:

Bongos & other percussion instruments
Coconut Palms (or different types of palms)
how about beautiful Caribbean flowers?
Cigars
Mangos, coconut, & bananas
Salseros (people dancing salsa) or silouettes of dancing couples
(music is a HUGE part of our culture)

Also, you could make a rum cake as your cake since rum was a traditionally cuban liquor. In fact, the Bacardi family brought their rum company to Puerto Rico and Miami due to the changes surrounding the revolution.

Just a few ideas ... let me know if you have any questions ... I'd be happy to help you out!

Cari