I ended up using the fondant hydgrangeas on a flowerpot cake. I was actually just itching to make a cake so I didn’t really have a good use for it, I ended up giving it to a pregnant friend.
I used 3 2.5cm layers of banana cake as well as half a ball tin to shape the dome. I used chocolate ganache to stick the layers together and do a crumb coat after I had shaped the pot.
Ready to go with flowers, leaves and terracotta fondant
With the pot, I was really a bit too impatient so it hasn’t come out perfect. I didn’t wait until the cakes had frozen solid before I started to carve them, probably left them in the freezer for two hours. I measured the top of the cake to get the base measurement of the pot and I carved on an angle, pretty much making the pot upside down so the wider part was on the bottom. Then I gave it a coat of ganache and put it in the fridge for a bit. Again, impatient, didn’t let it set hard!
Then I covered the upside down pot in a terracotta coloured fondant i had made by using brown and orange food colouring. Once the fondant was on, I tipped the pot up the right way and added a fondant strip as the pot lip.
Then I put the dome on top and secured it with a central dowel, and heaped the chocolate ganache on top. The dark chocolate gives an illusion of dirt between the flowers 
Then while the ganache was still wet I started to stick the hydrangeas on as well as a few leaves around the base of the dome. I probably used about 90 flowers.
My wonderful sister-in-law brought me these cute silicone moulds for xmas and I have been dying to get a cake out of them!
I decided to make a cake that resembles a bunch of hydrangeas in a basket/pot whatever. I was going to go for the terracotta pot idea, but decided I wanted to use the new quilting tool I got as I need the practice!
But even before I can think of the cake, I have to make the flowers… tiny as they are, and I want to make them so they cover half of my 6″ ball tin for a real posy look. I started off by using some left over fondant in three shades of blue, rolling them out and cutting the shapes with the hydrangea cutter. I greased the mould with Kremelta and put the cut out onto the veiner, and pressed the top half down. Beautiful! So impressed at the detail. I removed the flower by gently un-sticking the petals using a paintbrush, and sat them in flower shaping cups to dry.
After about an hour I brushed a coat of white lustre dust over them, to give them some sparkle. Then after about another hour I did some detailing with blue lustre dust. I was happy this made each flower unique; I used different amounts of dust, different techniques and shaded different areas so I got a whole lot of flowers from the same fondant that were various shades of bluey-purple. I finished the flowers off by painting a tiny dot of gold edible paint in the centres. I have seen tutorials where they used a fondant covered wire to go through the centre, but for the purpose of this cake they do not need to be wired, so why waste time right!!
And repeat the process… many, many times…. I only have one flower shaping dish which holds ten flowers at a time… so I could only do two or three batches a day. I ended up making more than 100 hand brushed flowers, ready to go on the cake next week
I also made a couple of the petunia flowers too just to see how they came out. I’ve been told they will keep, so I will save them for something else
For my own birthday I thought i’d make myself a cake… a little sad but really I just wanted a chance to practice with some of the new tools and things I have gotten recently. I was inspired by a cake I saw online, and thought I would give it a go. I made two 9″ and two 7″ round white chocolate mud cakes and stuck them together with raspberry buttercream, and also used the buttercream for the crumb coat.
I covered both cakes in light blue fondant and stuck the smaller one on top of the bigger one, securing with a central dowel. Then came the “joy” of making the circle shapes… I found a neat nest of circle cutters in Stevens recently so I had plenty to make varying sizes. But the heat…. the Auckland humidity and fondant don’t really go well together…. So after a couple of trial runs with droopy circles I decided to roll the fondant out flat and put it in the freezer for 3 or 4 minutes before cutting the circles. They came out stiff enough not to droop when I tried to apply them to the side of the cake, but still soft enough so they didn’t crack when I moulded them to the side. There were a few that were too dry and they cracked but at this point I didn’t care!!
I had made the flowers some days before hand, my first attempt at a nice big cupped flower. Actually this was my second attempt… the first attempt I put into the spare room to dry and the dog got in and ate them 
I used purple fondant for the flowers, and cut each petal the cheap way by using a circle cutter to cut it into a more petal-like shape since I don’t have a petal cutter that big. Then I greased a glass bowl with Kremelta (vegetable shortening) and put a small circle of fondant on the bottom which I attached the petals so after I used the ball tool on them.
The I did the same with the second layer of petals, just using a smaller bowl to dry them. Once they had dried overnight and gotten their shape I tipped them out of the bowl and sat them upside down over the bottom of an overturned glass to dry some more. Then I decided they purple wasnt the right colour and so I started to paint them with food colour and vodka… this started off ok but as they dried it started getting grainy and weird looking. I painted all of the flowers, and decorated the very small ones with glitter around the edges.
After another night of drying I put the smaller petals inside the bigger ones and also an even smaller flower into the centre. Then I made a black centre and pushed stamens into it. The big flower was to go on top and the smaller flowers at the side.
Once all my circles had been painstakingly applied to the cake (ughhh) I hand rolled fondant balls for the border. I have a silicone moulder, but for this cake I wanted the border to be of alternating colours. After the balls were attached I attached the flowers and voila!
I got my other half to order me this tool for rolling out fondant called ‘The Mat’. It basically looks like two layers of clear heavy plastic, but is completely food safe. It was pretty expensive for what it is, but I have just used it and I love it!
It means that my fondant will always be rolled out thinly and smoothly without needing tons of icing sugar to keep it from sticking, and it wont dry out as I am using it. I have yet to use it to cover a cake (which will be more difficult) but I made some fondant flowers today with it and got the fondant so nice and thin.
This is so worth the cost! Can’t wait to use it on a cake. My next cake coming up is my very own birthday cake and I will be replicating a cute cake I saw online somewhere. Have also been asked to make another wedding cake for february, so looking forward to that!
I made the big version of the small cake I made a few months back with the red rose topper. This was for a friend of a friends wedding, so I really wanted it to be perfect! Luckily for me, I didn’t even have to bake the cake, as the cake was due less than 48 hours after my last exam for the year, so I really wouldn’t have had time. My friend baked four mudcakes, two 11″ and two 7″. I covered them with chocolate ganache before the fondant covering.
11″ and 7″ ready to go
So I made around 70 handmade fondant roses (one petal at a time!) in the weeks leading up to the day, and also a number of pearls that I painted with vodka and pearl lustre dust. I ended up with a couple of extra roses but i’m so glad I wasn’t caught short!
Some of the flowers
When I made the flowers that were going to sit on the bottom of the pile, I dried them over the edge of a cup so they didn’t get a squashed look, but they were strong enough to lay on their sides.
Bottom row of flowers
I covered the bottom cake first with white fondant, and then I covered the top cake – this was tricky to try to make sure that none of the chocolate smeared onto the white fondant! I ended up flipping it on its head and tucking the fondant under the bottom of the cake so that when it was placed on the bigger cake that it didn’t leave any mess. I just put one dowel down the middle and covered it over with the flowers.
I arranged the bottom row first and then just filled in the gaps. If there was a space where a flower wouldn’t fit but it needed something, I just placed one of the pearls in there. It was tricky, especially as the bunch got fuller!
Bunch of fondant roses
Then I started to make the black beads for the border. I pressed them into my silicone bead maker and let them set in the freezer for 5 minutes, then removed them onto some baking paper to dry out for a couple of minutes. I used a spray oil to grease up the mould, as I had previously had some trouble with beads being too sticky or too greasy, and the spray grease worked amazing!
I added a couple of flowers to the side of the cake where the top cake sat on the bottom one and ta-da, all done!
The finished product!
I saw a really cute example of a petal cake online somewhere that I wanted to replicate, so I started off by tinting my fondant to see if I could get the blue/teal colour I wanted for it. I got a pretty good colour, so I made a couple of practice flowers using a ball tool and petal pad to get a nice effect on the petals. I used different sized 5-petal rose cutters to cut out the shape and then stack them inside each other, painting them together with sugar water.
Blue flower for the top
For the cake, I made 2x 7″ mudcakes and covered them with chocolate ganache. I let the cakes sit overnight before covering them in white fondant.
Then I started to cut out petals of the dark teal fondant using a cutter, and fan them out using the ball tool. Then I glued them to the side of cake around the bottom. When one layer of petals was on the cake, I added a little bit of white fondant to the teal I had left over, to make the colour slightly lighter. Then I cut and balled another layer of petals, before lightening the fondant again. I repeated this process until I had a very light blue colour, which I used for the last layer of petals.
Layers of petals
I had wanted to use a ribbon to attach around the top to hide the petal edge, but it didn’t work! So I cut a length of fondant the same colour as the bottom layer of petals, and stuck it on instead.
Petal cake
Then I put three flowers on the top and added a few fondant pearls in the gaps.
Flower topper
The only disappointment was that the beautiful teal colour I spent so long getting right has not come out very well in the photos!
My first attempt at making buttercream roses on cupcakes…. Have watched many, many tutorials on YouTube on how to do this, and my first one wasn’t too bad! I used standard buttercream recipe and a Wilton 104 Petal tip. My cupcakes were vanilla.
First, I spread the cupcake with a tiny bit of icing just enough for the rose to stick onto. Then I piped the “bud” in the centre and worked my way around the cake petal by petal.
The first buttercream rose
The rose turned out pretty good, and after some experimentation I tried a two-toned rose using light and dark pink. It was a bit tricky, and something that will take much more practice!
Two-toned attempt
I was making 23 cupcakes all up, and I did 12 roses. The rest of the cupcakes were decorated with cute sprinkles and I added some fondant flowers to a few of them. Really love my new bargain cupcake stand too!
Tower of pretty cupcakes!
