Daisies and Hibiscus

by Laura Leydig Maxey
(Strunk, KY, USA)

Daisies And Hibiscus

A Lifelong Fascination With Decorating Cakes

Cake decorating has always been something that I enjoy. I remember as a child being fascinated by it. I often wondered how they did what they did to make it look so good. Now that I decorate, I still wonder how some of the techniques are done.

When I was ask to make this cake, I was told that the bride wanted Daisies and Hibiscus flowers made of gum paste. I had never made Hibiscus before so this was going to be interesting. I looked up pictures of the flowers.

The Little Engine That Could

I felt like the little engine that could. I began to think to myself, I cannot make this flower. The more I looked at it the more I thought, maybe I can do this flower.

Well, I made one flower. It was not that bad. So I started making more. Knowing that I had to have 9 Hibiscus was a bit intimidating. The most reasonable thing to do was to make the Daisies first. They are the easiest flower to make.

After the Daisies were done I started on the Hibiscus. Once the gum paste was to the right peach color, I made three. The following day I made three blue flowers and the third day three rose colored hibiscus to finish them off.

How To make Gumpaste Hibiscus

To make these beautiful flowers,

Color gum paste to the shade needed. Once you achieve the color desired, bend a piece of wire at the top to hold onto the gum paste.

Take a marble size piece of gum paste and roll it out into a long tube shape about 3 inches long. With the wire in hand, slide the gum paste onto the wire and added some stamens to the top section of the gum paste.

Place that piece into the Styrofoam to harden.

After the pollen tube has hardened to the desired strength start on the petals. Roll out the gum paste and use a circle cutter about 2 inches in diameter. Using the ball tool, round the edges and begin to position them onto the pollen tube.

To make sure everything stays in the position you like, rough up some aluminum foil leaving hills and valleys and place it on a large bowl. Stab a hole into the foil with the wire that was attached to the flower.
TIP: Foil works great to keep gum paste flowers in the shape. The next day the flowers will be dry and ready to use.

Now that the flowers are made, put them together with floral tape. group them according to the colors needed for each tier.

TIP: I found that if I put them together like a corsage, it makes it less time consuming to set up the cake on delivery day.

The Tiered Cake

The cake was a 4 tier wedding cake. The largest tier was white .

The second tier was chocolate with chocolate butter cream icing between the layers.

The third tier was red velvet with cream cheese butter cream icing.

The top tier was white.

The icing I made for the cake was butter cream. I use the Wilton recipe for butter cream icing. I have found that the people I make cakes for like that recipe. You can go to Wilton.com to get a lot of recipes for making cakes and icings.

Once you have the cake tiers ready to stack, measure and cut jumbo plastic straws. Insert the straws into the tiered cakes to stack them.

TIP: I have found that the jumbo straws work best when assembling a tiered cake. I usually buy them in bulk on eBay.

Ready for delivery

This was going to be an outside wedding. Well we all know that extreme outside heat and butter cream icing do not make good friends. I got the cake there and decided to wait until the last possible moment to set it up because of the summer heat. By the time I set it up the sun was starting to go down behind the trees. Despite the outside heat the cake did not melt.

Thank You for taking the time to read my entry.
Laura Maxey

Thanks very much!
~Lorelie~

This article was printed from Wedding-Cakes-For-You.com

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