Love and Lots of Sugar

Gumpaste Anemones

When I made the flowers for the wedding cake, I consulted my books, YouTube, and the internet at large - and then I merged and modified all of the methods I found to kind of do it my own way. Here’s how I made the purple anemones.

Here are the tools I used: a silicone mat (I have several of varying price points, but my favorite for small jobs like this was actually 100 yen at The Daiso); the thin pink foam that came with the (old) Wilton Gumpaste flower set (you can get it separately now); the large rose cutter that comes with the (new) Wilton Gumpaste flower set; the ball tool that comes with the Wilton Gumpaste Tool Set, the thin stick tool (from the same set), the Wilton Flower Impression Mat Set, a small rolling pin, a glass and some Press ‘N’ Seal to keep the gumpaste fresh, some gum glue and a paintbrush. (Confession: I couldn’t get Tylose powder in time for this cake so I used Fixodent. So the “gum glue” is actually Fixodent powder dissolved in water.)

The first step is to roll out some gumpaste and cut out a Large Rose shape.

After moving it to the foam, I used the veiner mat as a stamp to get some texture on there. I later realized that I could just roll the gumpaste directly onto the veiner mat and cut it there. Hurr durrr.

Next up, use the ball tool to thin/ruffle the edges. Anemones aren’t all that ruffly, but you do need to thin them a bit.

Move the piece to a former; in my case I used aluminum foil to make molds of a small glass prep bowl I have. (This set is great, it has a wonderful variety of sizes.)

Do the whole thing again, then paint the center of the first flower with some gum glue, and place the second one on top of it.

Now use the small stick to poke a hole through both layers and the foil.

At this point I left them to dry for several days. Somewhere during that time I painted them with petal dust and thinned out Americolor gel paste.

When I was ready to make the centers, I started by making a ball out of black gumpaste, and inserting a looped (fairly thick - I think it was 16 gauge) wire that had been dipped in the gum glue.

I pressed this into one of the flower center molds on the veining mat set.

Then I brushed the center of the flower with gum glue and threaded the wire through the hole.

I forgot to make an impression in the center of this one before I took these pictures - but now is a good time to gently press the larger end of the ball tool into the middle of the center. Then start inserting stamens - anemones have A LOT. Again, I was operating on a limited timeframe and wasn’t able to order any stamens, so I made some. Most people use black stamens for anemones, but upon closer inspection of a purple anemone at the garden center, I noticed that the stamen itself is actually a similar color to the flower (but lighter), and the pollen is black. So since I had a pack of blue craft wire laying around, that’s what I used.

Et voila! I stuck the wires in styrofoam (with the aluminum foil formers still attached) until I was ready to assemble the floral sprays for the cake.

(ps, I took a home study course in floral design long before I ever got into cake decorating.)

The reason why I’ve been too busy to post lately.

Another “psssssshhhhht, I could make that” moment of success. Rose gold-wrapped chalcedony.

Whenever I start feeling a little burnt out on caking, I like to do some other kind of creative thing. Around the end of last summer, I was so burnt out that I bought a bench block and a soldering torch. There’s something very appealing about the idea of making something that isn’t going to be eaten (or thrown in the trash, as I’m sure the gumpaste flowers I’ve been slaving over this week will be).

114 down; 206 to go.
This time next year, I’ll be back in the States and able to walk into a craft store and buy a couple of packs of $&#% flower stamens like a normal person.

These took a lot longer than I thought they would. Or to be more accurate, I never actually thought about how long they would take when I offered to make them (around 3-4 hours, not counting baking, making buttercream, or piping & placing). Totally worth it.
(If it wasn’t for my massive collection of teeny-tiny cutters intended for making tiny shapes for bento boxes, I could never have pulled this off. Thank you, 100yen store!)

I just realized that I never posted a picture of the finished Tinkerbell cake!
I should be posting more often from now on; somebody mentioned me on a local forum and I got an huge influx of cake requests. I was having a hard time pulling myself up out of my “sabbatical”, so fate did it for me.

I don’t know how I ended up specializing in frozen buttercream transfers, but now I’m tracing Tinkerbell and her sister (huh?) with a size 0 tip. My hands shake like crazy and I have very little patience or tolerance for tedious tasks - how did I end up being good at this??