Gum Paste Flowers

      Joy and I each bought some flower sets to make gum paste flowers.  Since we had a wedding reception at church last week, we decided this was a great opportunity to practice.  We made three types of flowers - lilies, dogwood blossoms, and daisies.  The lilies are probably the hardest to make of the three and take the most time too - but well worth it!  They are not completely edible since you have to put wire in them to hold them together. They look so realistic though, many people did not realize they were actually edible!!  The dogwoods were fun and pretty easy to make and one of our favorites.  We want to experiment a little more with the centers to get them a little more realistic looking!  We have made daisies before, the only difference is the center is made with gum paste instead of royal frosting (what we have used in the past.) 

Gum Paste Flowers

We also experimented with a torte style cake.  We had a little raspberry filling left from the wedding cake and didn't want it to be wasted.  When I saw a torte at Sam's the day before, I decided we would make some to put our lilies on.  The cake is a butter yellow cake and the frosting is our homemade Mock Whipped Cream.  Sam's leaves the sides open so you can see the layers, but I am not so sure I like seeing the sides!  I might cover the sides next time with the frosting and see how it works!  I actually ran out of frosting and couldn't even pipe all the way around! 

Gum Paste Lilies

The cupcakes were just a simple store bought lemon cake mix with a cream cheese citrus frosting.  After it took us so long to make just 19 flower cupcakes, we joked it would be impossible for us to ever compete on a show like cupcake wars!  It is fun to watch those shows, but we know we could NEVER do them! Because we are inexperienced, slow and don't work as well under a time pressure.  We really have so much to learn and prefer to just do it occasionally for friends, family, neighbors and maybe the county fair each year!!