Pretty Lilies

This cake was for a close friend of my sister who is celebrating her upcoming nuptials. The invitations were covered in lilies so it seemed appropriate to cover a cake with lilies... I haven't made lilies before so I looked to my Wilton resources and found instructions in my gum paste book. I only had one style of cutter. If I make them in the future it would be nice to have different sized flowers to give some variance to the design.  I played around with my powder food colorings which was fun.  Because there was some distance and travel associated with the delivery of this cake, my sister added the flowers when she got to the shower. This way they stayed fresh and didn't flatten from the storage of the cake in the refrigerator.   Here are some pictures of the assembly.

From this cutting of gum paste the lilies are born...

 The lilies are stretched, smoothed and wrapped around to make the basic flower.  They are drying upside down to give them some structure.

The flowers are ready for their highlights.

 Ready for Transport...

 

This little cutie enjoyed the flowers and couldn't believe that they were edible. Too cute! 

Cindy turns 40...

My big sister turned 40 this weekend. Like most people, I think my big sister is awesome... But, I'm serious- she really is... She is a great wife and mom, she keeps things running smoothly in her house and balances many different roles in life on very limited sleep (I worry about that, but she already knows that...) I have a lot of love and respect for my sister so I wanted to make her a cake that made her feel special and celebrated her big birthday. Here are pics of the assembly...

 This was my first attempt at Tulips.  Here I am cutting the gum paste

 Forming the flower on th end of the rolling pin...

 

Placed cotton balls around the outside of the flowers to help keep the petals standing straight up to dry...

 Finished drying... Now ready for the inside...

Lillie's for Sharon

Made my first gumpaste Lillie's for a dear friends bridal shower cake. She sent me a picture of the wedding cake she ordered so I made my version of the cake for a work wedding party.  Instead of a round shape I used a square pan and I changed the colors from black to more fall tones. The lillies were easier to make then I anticipated.  I watched a video by edna from designmeacake.com.  It only really required a heart cookie cutter, a pointy cup and some powder food coloring. Enjoy the cake!

Here are some shots of the flowers coming together...

I needed cone shaped cups, so I cut up bathroom cups and taped them to form a point. They worked nicely because they were wax coated and the gum paste released nicely when it was dry.   I used 20 guage floral wire and formed yellow stamen's for center of the flowers.

 Measuring up the stamens to make sure they were the right size.  The calla lilies were made with the heart shaped cookie cutter, then wrapped them around the cone cups and frilled the edges.

 The supplied needed to add the coloring and shading.
 

  Making the bows...

Added the stamen and hung the flowers to dry on a pitcher...

 The finished flowers ready to be moved to the cake.






The finished cake

Fall Shower of Flowers

My cake making is connecting me to more and more people, which is exciting for me. It isn't social networking, it's cake networking! I made this cake at the request of my friend Leigh. She and her office are celebrating the pending marriage of one of their co-workers. I was excited to learn that some of Leigh's co-workers have checked out my blog... I hope the cake lived up to the expectations...

The top layer was chocolate, bottom was yellow. Covered the cake in buttercream and then smoothed with Viva papertowel method. Made mums and roses out of a 50/50 mix of gumpaste and fondant. The ribbon was regular fondant. I used my pasta maker for the first time with this cake. It make it a lot easier with less rolling with the rolling pin. Thanks Mom for finding me a pasta maker!

Here are some pics of the cake in progress:

Most people have pizza cutters to cut pizza- Not me... I use them to cut fondant!

I also don't use my ice cream scooper for Ice cream, mine fills cupcake's to the perfect height...

To give the cake some stability, I insert plastic straws to hold the top layer of cake, then cut to the desired height. It's a lot easier then wooden dowels. The top layer is sitting on a cardboard cake circle which then rests on the straws...

The start of the mums...

Abbe Reunion Cupcakes

This was a busy weekend. Today was the Abbe Society reunion, it was a honorary service society I was part of during my West Chester days... It's so much fun to get together at Megan's house each year. Thanks Megan for hosting us! You are the best!

I made some chocolate cupcakes for all to enjoy. I filled the inside with buttercream icing and used some gum paste flowers I had from a previous gum paste making flower day... I covered and smoothed the cupcakes in buttercream and then used various tip 103 techniques to make flowers.

I used tip number 67 to make the leaves. I still can't get the point of the leaf to come out as I want it to, it looks like the icing just rips away and doesn't come to a pointy point, if you know what I mean... I need to google some help to figure this technique out... Will do that next time.

Megan's children are so precious. Here they are enjoying their cupcakes...

Here are a few more pics of the day...

Debbie used my cupcakes to enhance the display of her cake... I think they did an excellent job :)

The Group... As always, it was so nice to see everyone... and to catch up on each other lives. We are all living life a little differently, but at our core we are a group that geniouly cares for each other and we wants only the best for each other...