Sunflowers, Hessian & Vintage Lace Cake

I designed this Vintage Sunflower cake for a friends 50th birthday, the brief was "up to you to feed 100 party goers!"

The invitations had a sunflower theme so I used that for my inspiration. I thought two deep cakes would be better than one huge one so opted for 6" deep 10" square with an 6" deep 8" round on the top.

I made the sunflowers using yellow flower paste for the petals and brown for the centres, when dried a good dusting with darker shades of yellow and some orange was added to the petals and darker brown to the centres before steaming to set the colour and achieve a more natural finish.

This flower choice does some what limit your colour options but I decided on a mink brown and sage green colour scheme to blend together rather than to clash.
White sugar paste had brown and a dash of pink food colour added to achieve the right shade of mink and spruce green was added to ivory sugar paste for the sage green colour.

A wood effect iced cake drum helps to draw the eye away from the dark flower centres making them less obvious and obtrusive. (there is a video on this blog showing how to achieve the wood effect)

Edible Hessian and Vintage lace was was achieved with "edible lace & moulds" after letting this dry over night the Hessian was dusted with shades of brown and beige for a realistic look.

I draped one piece over the top tier, the other around the base of the bottom tier.
For a more feminine look I added a double edged decorative lace and edible buttons to the bottom and a taller flat edged lace around the base of the top tier.

Bunting was made out from pieces of left over Hessian cut into triangles with letters added to spell out a birthday message, attached with piped string and more vintage edible buttons.

Mix And Match Side Design Cake

A set of side design cutters have been used to create this dramatic cake, with metallic gold modelling paste and Midnight black "Roll n Cover" sugar paste, set off by a black cake drum.

Gold modelling paste is a great product, after cutting into small pieces it's best warmed in the hand before working a piece at a time to make it pliable. It's then ready to roll out nice and thin on a surface greased with a small amount of petal base, this makes it easy to release and prevents it from drying out. Lightly grease the cutters before cutting out your shapes, this 8" round, 5" deep cake needed 20 pieces. After covering your cake with Midnight black sugar paste you can attach your decoration with edible sugar glue, making sure you line them up straight and put one directly above the other. Ruffle flowers are made from three different sized circle cutters after preparing the gold paste the same way, you fold the circles into ruffles and glue together before drying in some formers to hold there shape. They can be added to the cake when they are dry.