ANYWAYS...
I agreed to make a cake for my co-worker's daughter's party way back in the fall, when we were fully staffed and it seemed like such a great idea.
The picture of the cake I got has a bow on top of the center cake and she wanted the others left plain. Plain white fondant, purple fondant bow around the center of satellite cakes and a big bow on the center of the stacked cakes, purple bead borders. Needs to feed about 200 people, half white and half chocolate.
Fast foward to the last week in January....Oh no I said I wanted flowers on the tops of all the cakes. Now I know this is not what I agreed to but after talking to the mother (who is not the cake orderer) I decided to go along with it. It took another 3 days to get the Birthday girl in to talk about what she wanted. At the same time she agreed to let me do the bows out of ribbon since she wants them very, very dark purple and that much food color makes fondant taste gross and makes it harder to work with. Oh yeah and BTW the numbers are up to 300+.
Now keep in mind I've lost 1/3 of my crew, we are in the middle of season and now I am making flowers too.
23 hours spent on gumpaste flowers and leaves, that is after I cheated and ordered lilies.
I didn't detail the process for the carnations
small centers, I left a few this size but made more petals and added to the remaining ones.
Um, yeah these are supposed to be on wires. Crappola..see what happens when i work tired.
ROSES are next, I like making these but they are not quick by any stretch of the imagination.
first you make a little cone for the center then you cut out every leave (5 for a small, 12 for a large) thin the edge with the ball tool, cup the centers then glue them together, letting them dry between each layer of petals. I took a shortcut on the 3 petal layer since I have the cutter for it.
Close up of the first one I finished
The last layer of petals dry upside down to keep the shaping right.
Roses in various stages of finish.
End of day two. Day three was finishing the roses, then day four onto leaves and finishing the lilies that I ordered.
I have a veining tool that speeds this up. Only took 2 hours for 43 leaves.
Finished lily. They came from the supplier plain white.
Putting stems on the flowers I forgot to start on the wires.
I started the arrangement for the center cake on a ball to make it faster to assemble.
I got Super Baker Friend to help me with assembly since 2 sets of hands speed things up
Almost there...I actually liked it better without the border but since it wasn't my cake
The finished piece. According to several people "everybody loved it".
Those flowers are AMAZING!
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