A Floral Mother's Day

Firstly, it has been so lovely with the Spring flowers blooming, that I definitely wanted to capitalize on that to celebrate Mother's Day.  I used flowers as a theme for a Mother's Day brunch with my mother and grandmother.  For the invitation, I cut the flowers using my Cameo Silhouette: 

In keeping with the flower theme, I decided that the "piece de resistance" of brunch would be a cake covered in flowers.  I decided to experiment with fondant (this was my first time). It was a lot of fun and now that I got my hands dirty, I'm not as afraid to use it and I know the basics.  I decided to go with bright, bold colors, like the colors of the flowers I have seen in the pictures above.  

The first step was dying the white fondant.  I dyed it an array of garden-flower colors: 

I then used fondant cutters (like cookie cutters) to cut out various flowers.  I also experimented and made some roses.  I did this several days early, put the flowers in a cardboard box and placed them in a dark space to store them.  This way they were out of the light so the bold colors did not fade.  Before placing the heavier flowers in the box, where they would harden over the next few days, I put several toothpicks into the flowers while they were soft so that I could easily stick them into the cake when my cake was baked.  

I then baked the cake.  I used a round cake pan that basically allows you to bake a cake in the shape of a ball. When it was cool, I cut it into four layers and used buttercream to ice the layers together.  I then iced the entire cake with buttercream.  

It was then time to apply the fondant  

I dyed a whole mess of fondant "buttercup yellow."  You dye fondant by taking a toothpick and sticking it in the dye, you then pierce the fondant in various locations to get the dye in there.  Then you use your hands to knead it until all the fondant turns the desired color.  At this point the fondant gets really tacky, like salt water taffy.  After I was done, I "floured" the fondant and my rolling pin with confectioners sugar and rolled it all out.  I then picked up the sheet to cover the cake.  It goes on pretty smoothy.  I then cut around the bottom of the cake and tucked the fondant as far under as possible. 

I made a batch of Royale Icing and dyed it "Kelly Green."  I decided to use the Royale Icing to affix the flowers, but also to pipe vines and maybe leaves around the cake.  Since the cake was round, it was really important to affix flowers on there with something strong so they wouldn't slide down the side of the ball.  

Decorating the cake with flowers was probably the most fun part!  I really loved the roses that I made.  I have a package of gum paste and I would be interested to see how that's different to work with.  I feel like it might make more delicate flowers. 

Anyway, here is the final result... let's see what happens next time!