Flower Topper

I was asked to make a flower topper for someone to use on a cake they were making themselves. She wanted it really colourful and asked for mainly roses with a few filler flowers. 

Cream Rose

To fit this brief I made roses in blue, pink, purple and cream. I also made some white jasmine and some rose leaves. I felt that any more flower varieties would overwhelm the bunch and make it look too fussy. 

I arranged these in a line bunch in order to decorate the middle of the cake and create a nice centre piece. 

Finished Flowers

Along with these flowers I also made a few extra so they could use some on the edge of the cake and balance out the cake. 

Smaller bunch for the edge

What do you think? 

Finished Bunch

Top View

Don't forget that I can make just the topper if you'd like to make the cake yourself or have a cake that you want to add something else to. I make the flowers to your specification and size. 

Pink Rose

16 number cake with red Roses

I was asked to make a 16 number cake decorated with red Roses and red edges. 

First job was to make the numbers, I didn't use templates or special tins for these I just made them out of standard circles and square. For the number 1 I used a 6" square, cut it into 3 placing one along the bottom, one for the stem and then the last is cut off to form the tip. For the 6 I used 2 6" round tins. The first formed the circle on the 6 and then last was cut in half to form the stalk. 

I covered these cakes in 2 parts. The edges they wanted red so I coloured a strip of icing and stuck this around the sides. I then cut a white piece to put on the top of the cake. 

I made lots of Roses from buds to full flowers along with leaves. These were then bunched together and placed in flower picks for the cake. 

Sugar Roses with leaves

I made some butterflies and allowed these to dry in shape before placing them on the cake. 

Top of cake

Finally I made some blossoms for the edges of the cake to add a little texture and I piped the message on the top of the cake.  

Front view

Overall this isn't my favourite cake. I had issues making the cake as numbers are tough to cover. I don't particularly like the colours but it isn't my cake. I hope the birthday girl enjoyed the cake, I know the cake inside was good.

Anniversary Cupcakes

I was asked to create some cupcakes for a 60th wedding anniversary. I was asked to make red and white roses and to use edible lace in the design. I drew up a few designs and after some discussions we agreed in 4 main designs and 3 different flavours. 

So I created 20 cupcakes which were flavoured lemon, chocolate and vanilla. 

Using edible lace mats I made up various designs and used these to decorate the cupcakes. I piped along the edges of some to add more definition. I had made the roses out of flower paste, this was more of a challenge than usual as they were so small but after a few practices I got it sorted. I made red and white roses. 

Those cakes with roses I piped in the opposite colour in a "birdcage" effect. 2 of the cupcakes I decorated with edible diamonds to represent the diamond anniversary. 

Vintage Cupcakes

I was pleased with how these cupcakes came out and I hope my customer enjoyed them. I believe they fit the brief. I'm pleased to have this order so I can show that I can make cupcakes too. 

If you're looking for cakes, for any occasion including weddings to birthdays, please get in touch to discuss your requirements. 

Edible Lace and Roses

Nan's Autumn Colours Cake

I was asked to make a cake which had autumn colours on it with roses and freesias. I decided to make a white cake with some piped details, which my mum tells me makes the cake more elegant, with strong bold colours in the flowers. I spent several days making orange, red and yellow Gerberas, Roses and freesias. I also made several autumn leaves to go in the bunch. 

Roses

Gerberas

Collection of flowers and autumn leaves

The cakes themselves were carrot cake, on the top an 8", and a light fruit cake 10" on the bottom. The fruit cake was covered in marzipan and then white sugar paste, I made this a few days in advance as fruit cake last so beautifully. Carrot cake is much more tricky, it needs to be made very fresh and is also very fragile so much more difficult to decorate. I double coated it in icing in order to give it a better finish. 

Covered cakes

I then dowelled the bottom tier for support and piped detailing on both layers.

Piped details on the cake

The final step was to put it all together. I used the roses to make a large bunch on the top of the cake, this was trimmed with autumn leaves and had freesias for height effect. 

Roses, leaves and freesias on the top

I stuck the Gerberas on the side of the cake for colour throughout the sides. 

Overall I was very pleased with this cake and thought the colours were beautiful. 

Simple White Roses

For my final display cake I went back to the flowers theme but decided to make it much simpler. I wanted to introduce a little colour, but subtly, so I covered the 3 tiers in a pale blue icing. I used 3 dummies, 10", 8" and 6", on a 14" drum. I covered the drum in pale blue icing as well and trimmed everything with cream ribbon. 

I made some cream and white roses for the top and side of the cake. On top I created a topper with rose leaves as the base and then 3 large roses on top of this. 

Roses on the top

Part way down the cake, on each tier, I added a small rose bud and then on the board at the bottom I placed another full rose. 

Roses on each tier

Finally I placed some rose petals scattered over the cake, these were cream with a hint of pink at the tips. 

Petals scattered on the cake

Overall the effect of this cake is very simple but effective. I like making cakes like this and I hope that it'll inspire some brides in the coming weeks. 

Finished Cake

Red Roses Cake

I was asked to make a vanilla sponge this week decorated in Roses, preferably with a red theme. So I decided to do just that.

I made a 10" Vanilla Madeira sponge and filled this with vanilla butter icing. I crumb coated the cake, covered it in a thin layer of icing to coat it, and then I covered the cake in white sugar paste. I wasn't happy with the way the cake was covered, this is primarily because I didn't cover the board first and tried to do it in one go. I ended up marking the board and making a bit of a mess of the cake but hopefully it wasn't too obvious by the time I'd finished. 

I made a selection of roses in dark red, lighter red and cream. I made 1 full blown rose with wired outer petals and the rest were then unwired petals but wired roses. I also made a selection of rose leaves. These were arranged in a posy design with the full blown in the centre, the others around it and then the leaves along the bottom. 

Rose Posy

To trim the edge of the cake I decided to follow on the theme and I made some more rose leaves, these were placed all the way around the cake and I made some Christmas Roses to stick on top and break this up slightly. 

The board was trimmed with red ribbon. Gary told me that the cake looked too plain so I decided to make some red petals to scatter over the cake and break up the white a little. 

Finished Cake

Finished Cake

Overall I was fairly happy with the cake. I still have a lot of practice to do on covering cakes but I was pleased with the decoration and was quite proud of the cake. I hope the birthday girl and her family enjoyed the cake and I look forward to make more. 

PME Sugar Flower Diploma

I decided to improve my skills by doing a PME Sugar Flower Diploma. These courses are run at select locations across the country and are tightly monitored by PME. I chose a shop in Maidstone to do my course, Confection Perfection, and I'm really glad I did as I've now found a great shop, great set of courses and a great bunch of people. 

I did the course over 10 weeks, 2.5 hours a week and we worked really hard over that period of time. I wanted to reinforce everything so I spent lots of time each week practicing the flowers and making many more. 

Over the course of the 10 weeks we've progressed from basic unwired flower plaques to creating individually wired petals put together as a flower. I've made some sprays and posies putting the flowers together. For our final assessment we had to create 4 seasonal plaques with the unwired flowers and then a display board for all the wired flowers. I'm going to show pictures of each of the flowers I've made by taking photos of that section of the board. 

Summer Plaque:

Summer

On this plaque we learnt how to make Gerbera and unwired Ivy leaves. 

Spring Plaque:

Sping

Primrose flowers and Leaves

Autumn:

Autumn

Acorns and Oak leaves with Autumn leaves. 

Winter:

Winter

Holly leaves and berries. Christmas rose and a Poinsettia. 

Wired Flowers, these are all pictures of my display board which can be seen at the end. 

Rose spray

Rose bud, half rose, full rose and full blown rose. Also rose leaves and rose petals. 

Carnation Posy

Posy of Carnations with wired ivy. 

Orchid bunch

Yellow Freesias with white Cattleya Orchids and yellow and red Cymbidium Orchids. 

Calla lily bunch

White Calla Lilies, White Jasmine, Lilly of the Valley and Berries. 

Honeysuckle

Honeysuckle and leaves.

Lily

Easter Lily, I put 3 lilies on the board, this Easter lily along with star gazer and a tiger lily. I also put some orange buds. 

Lilies

Blackberries

Blackberry stem, unripe, almost ripe and ripe berries along with various stages of the leaves (Summer through to Autumn). 

Complete Board

And this is the finished board. In the corners there is blossoms and also some daisies on the dummy cake. 

Through all this hard work I passed and achieved my first diploma certificate. 

Certificate

I'm very pleased and feel like I earned it. I have another diploma, plus a load of other courses, this month and hopefully I can get on to the last diploma. Once the 3rd is completed I'll have the set and will have obtained my masters certificate. I hope you'll agree that my flowers have certainly improved through the duration of the course. I feel like I've learnt so much and can't wait for other aspects of my decorating to improve when I attend the next courses. 

Roses Cake

I was asked to make a cake for my sister in law and was told that I could use it to practice anything I wanted,wooo! So I decided to use the cake to practice the roses that I learnt last week on my Sugar Flower Diploma, these are wired flowers. The only request I had was that I used raspberry icing on the cake, so of course I obliged!! 

I decided to try out a recipe that I obtained from Confection Perfection, in Maidstone, for a lemon cake. I thought the lemon would go nicely with the raspberry. In this lemon cake, for flavour, you use lemon zest and fresh juice. Also once the cake is cooked you pour a lemon syrup into the cake. This makes the cake lovely and moist but also intensifies the lemon flavour. The cake was also a much deeper and better size than my previous cakes so the quantity of mixture seemed perfect. 

Once the cake was cooled I filled and covered it in raspberry buttercream. I left it to harden but due to the weather it never really firmed as much as I'd like. In future I'd put it in the fridge for a short time in order to really harden it up. The reason I say this is because when I tried to cover the cake in sugar paste it was very difficult to create a good finish. 

I covered the board with sugar paste and then trimmed the board and cake with teal ribbon. Next step was to make the roses. 

Time to make roses

I decided to make the roses in a pale pink to contrast the teal trim. I coloured in 3 tonal shades so that the centre of the rose was darker than the outer petals. Using the techniques I learnt last week (or which I will try and put a blog post up later) I made a bud, half rose, full rose and a full blown rose. I also made some rose leaves out of white platinum paste, which I dusted up to the right colours and jasmine out of blue flower paste. 

Centrepiece

All the flowers are wired so they can be manipulated into a spray for the top of the cake. I design this and held it together using floral tape. I then cut off the wire and then placed it into a flower pick for the centre of the cake. I used a few extra flowers around the edge of the cake and then placed petals on the cake. 

Top View

Overall View

Side View

Full Blown Rose

Bud and half rose

Other Side, buds with petals

Overall I was pleased with the flowers, especially for a first proper attempt. I will, of course, practice much more. I wasn't pleased with the covering of the cake but I was fairly pleased with the decoration of it. 

Rose Garden Cake

I was asked to make a 60th birthday cake this week. The design we decided on was a rose garden cake and a vanilla sponge cake, jam filling. 

My first job was to make the cake, for this I used Mary Berry's recipe found here. It worked well and I was happy with the finished product. I filled the cake with some good quality raspberry jam and placed it on an iced cake board. 

Victoria Sponge

I covered the cake in a layer of butter icing in preparation for the decorations. 

Butter iced and ready to go. 

To make the rose bushes I first of all focused on making the flowers. Having never made these before I looked it up in a book to get a bit of an idea. It was made more difficult because the flowers were so tiny but I managed to make a range of flowers in varieties of pinks and purples. 

Little Roses

With these flowers I made some bushes by wrapping them in brown icing and then sticking leaves on top of this to create a bush effect. It might not be typically rose bush like but I think it's close enough to look effective. 

I made some paving slabs and a plaque out of icing and harden it with gum and then I set about designing the cake. I placed everything on the cake to get an idea of design. 

Placing on the cake to design

I wanted to make the borders out of biscuits and I was asked to make coconut grass so this was my next challenge. I used chocolate digestives and crushed these. Making sausages out of brown icing I marked out the borders and then carefully filled this in with the biscuits. 

Biscuit borders

I coloured some coconut green and carefully placed this in all the gaps and around the edge of the cake. It was difficult to get it to stick to the icing but I managed to get enough on the cake to get some coverage. 

Coconut Grass

I then stuck everything onto the cake. 

All stuck together

Unfortunately the pink plaque broke so I made another one out of white and carefully piped the lettering on to this. I then placed it on the cake and it was finished. 

Finished Cake Top

Side view

Top View

Unfortunately this plaque also broke in transit so I had to make another one. I wasn't as happy with the final one as the previous one but I hope it was ok.

New plaques!!

Overall I was really happy with the cake and I don't think, at this stage, I could have done any better. I've learnt a lot from creating this cake and I hope that the birthday lady and my "client" were also happy. 

If you have an event you'd like a cake for please get in touch. We can discuss a design to suit and at present (November 2013) I'm creating cakes for the cost of the ingredients.