A whole week of Baking!...Sugarcraft flowers

It was my Nan's birthday this week, and as she has had a rough couple of months, I wanted to make her a beautiful cake for her birthday. She has a collection of Wedgewood Blue pieces of china, and I used these as inspiration for my design. I wanted to use a couple of techniques I hadn't used before, and the first of these was sugarcraft roses.

I have made hand moulded roses before, and these are quick, easy and very effective to use on cakes, however they are not particularly realistic. Encouraged by reading Peggy Porschen's beautiful Cakes in Bloom book, I decided to put the theory into practice and make my own vintage roses.

Peggy Porschen's gorgeous Cake in Bloom book

(Little Smurf hats on sticks!)

I started by making the central cones and inserting a cocktail stick to make the base. After leaving these to dry I rolled out my sugar paste and started to create the centres of the roses. I'm not sure if it was my being left handed or if I was just getting used to it but the direction of which way to turn the flowers really threw me to start with! I added four petals to start with and then left them to dry.

By the next layer of five petals I was feeling a little more confident, at least until I then needed somewhere to support the roses once i had finished them! Luckily I needed some orange zest for the carrot cake I was making, so the zested orange became my cake dummy for flower drying, it gave the roses a lovely citrus smell!

Again I left the five petals to dry, then the following day I attached the final seven petals. Once I was into the flow it was much easier to attach the petals upside down on the rose, then it was a lovely surprise turning the rose the right way up to see how it looked. I then left them to dry upside down on a foam mat which was little nerve-wracking due to the delicate petals, but there wasn't a single breakage, so I was very happy.

To see the final cake, have a look at the following post...