Gumpaste Roses

Jumbo Rose No. 1

Jumbo Rose No. 2

Side by side

Who would have thought! Another post on gumpaste flowers.

I'm on this little mission now to practice or have a go at making different types of gumpaste flowers. How I wish I could pack my bags and hop across the ditch to learn from Greg Cleary or fly all the way to California to learn from Jacqueline Butler. Then there's also Paddi Clark in the UK. Ok - I know, the list can go on and I know that I will not be travelling anywhere so I'll just be doing some self-teaching.

After dusting off the tools, I made 2 jumbo gumpaste roses this week. They are about 11 cm wide and fits nicely into the teacups I have at home. The first one I made should have been thrown into the bin but I thought I'd take some pictures first. The second jumbo rose looked better but I know there is still a fair way to go before it's pretty enough for me. I've got plenty of homemade gumpaste left so I'll just have another go at making another jumbo rose before I move onto my next flower.

My next flower - a magnolia or perhaps a poppy?

I'm now craving for a sweet little something...more specifically - a sticky toffee cupcake!

Enjoy!

Pink Gumpaste Peony

My first attempt at making a peony after my class at PC almost 4 months ago. Goes to show how much you can forget in the 4 months when you don't practice! I'd better get onto practising my roses soon before I really forget.

I made the flower paste from scratch - it's really not that hard or time consuming to make. The only thing I did find is that I was ripping the edges off my petals so I may have to add something else to my flower paste to give it a bit more elasticity. This will be my little research project for the next little while. There are lots of recipes out there for making flower paste (or gumpaste) so I will be on a mission to find the 'perfect' texture for me.

The usual flower paste I use would cost me about $40 for a 1kg bucket (cheap compared to the Wilton gumpaste) and I love using it but at $40 a bucket I think I should start experimenting.

Do you see any veins in the petals? I don't!!! I should really invest in a good veiner - I couldn't get any texture out of the one I have and it was pretty frustrating when I tried to create texture by using the veining tool and ended up ripping my petals! 

Now, I just have to wait until the weekend before I can bring home my 'sick' Kitchen Aid from the repair shop and bake a cake to go with the peony. My next dilemma would obviously be what cake to make - I've been thinking white chocolate with passionfruit filling and white chocolate buttercream but we'll see what takes my fancy when I have the time to bake.

Enjoy!

Jojo & Leroy's Wedding

Jojo & Leroy

Some of the cupcakes

I wrote a few sentences to this post and forgot about it until someone reminded me that I have not yet posted pictures up of what I had made for Jojo & Leroy's wedding!

The wedding was on 5th May and it has taken me this long to remember and finish the post! How slack of me.

I baked over 300 of these mini red velvet cupcakes for the church reception - I still can't believe I actually baked over 300 of these mini morsels. I was lucky my mum & sister came over to help me assemble the cupcakes and put them into boxes for delivery. The flowers were done a few nights before after a late decision to make the flowers all one design and just have 2 colours. As usual, I had other grand plans of making roses to go with the cupcakes but I had only made 30 or so by the Tuesday so I knew there was no way I would be able to make it all in time unless I took a whole week off work and just made roses all day. This only highlights that I need to work on my time management skills - hehehe. I'm sure my husband couldn't agree more with this admission!

Enjoy!!

The Last Minute Rush...

I had to work a full day yesterday and had about 1 hour to decorate mum's birthday before dinner! Talk about rushing it. With limited time, I decided to cut out blossom flowers and left them to dry while I did the basketweave on the cake. It has been almost 2 years since I last did the basketweave (if my memory is right) and was amazed I had even remembered how to do it. Not the best looking cake but it was definitely YUM!

I couldn't cover the cake in fondant because the cake was a coffee cloud cake - a nice light sponge cake the way mum likes it, the fondant would have flattened the cake. This is my second attempt making this cake and it's not as difficult as I had anticipated it to be. The first attempt was successful and I decided to give the guinea pigs at work a treat.

Enjoy!

Caramelicious

I finally decided to try out a new caramel cupcake recipe this weekend. I made most of it in the mini size and some in the regular size.

The caramel didn't quite go 'wow' with this recipe - back to the drawing board to look for another caramel cupcake recipe. Perhaps I could add a few drops of caramel extract to add more flavour to it - make mental note to get some of the extract.

I was also going through my cupboards in the kitchen and decided to use up 'leftover' cupcake liners so I ended up with these orange coloured ones - I really don't like the colour, hence why they were the 'leftovers'. Wish I had photoshop to change the colour of those cupcake liners. The colour of the flowers are new to my lil' collection, as you can see I have a thing for pastels. I was thinking perhaps a blue rose - I'll get onto that as soon as I have coloured my freshly made flower paste from a recipe given to me by Miss J.

Enjoy!