OK, I've made sugar roses quite a few times now and every single time I make them, I make the buds the night before and then attach the petals the next day, but the problem I am having, is that by the time I come to about the third row of petals, the cone starts sliding about on the wire. Sometimes I'm lucky and although it slides a bit, it stays put, but today I spent ages making a rose and then tonight the wire just popped right out of it!

Do I need to leave the cones to dry for much longer? I'm going to leave the rest of the cones for 1 week and see if that makes the difference. Although my cones are dry on the outside, I'm thinking that the inside is still too soft. I use 100% gumpaste (I don't mix it with fondant) and I use sugar glue and a hooked wire. I roll my gumpaste super thin, but all the petals add weight, so I'm assuming it has to be that my cones aren't dry enough?

Does anyone have any tips or ideas?

Cheers

Check out deetmar's tip in this post....

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-619921-rose.html+center+centre+heat+wire

I've only played with sugar once in school, and noticed it absorbs moisture like no one's business! Within the hour whatever I made just slumped over. We didn't add the acid to the sugar which apparently helps prevent that from happening.

Greetings from East Anglia.

Your buds are not dried long enough, especially in this wet weather recently. It takes at least 3 days for them to harden in the middle. I also recommend using a glue using tylose powder and bottled or boiled & cooled water. It is super strong. I keep mine in a clear "nail polish" bottle that has a brush. (I bought it at a cake store.) When you insert your wire, be sure to do the hook and as you press it on, give it a slight twist to set the hook into the gumpaste, then press in to close it up tight, leave to dry. Make lots of varying sizes so when you need them, they're already dry. Use silica gel packets that come in your shoes and various items from shops to store with your centers. They absorb moisture and are non-toxic.

Use 20 g wire, so that it is strong and you can add as many petals as needed. Hope this helps you!

Thanks guys - Cake4ever, I had made a whole load of buds, so the one that fell off, was from a bud that had only dried over night, so left them until today and sure enough, the buds are now on there solid!!! I just assumed that overnight was long enough, but obviously not. I made a rose today and the bud didn't budge, so that's good news. I still have loads of buds left, so my plan now is to make heaps and heaps of buds whenever I've got spare gum paste and some spare time and just keep them handy.

Thanks for all the replies, much appreciated - turns out I was just too hasty to make roses! lol.

I made my centres out of fondant with a little tylose , I actually heat up the end of the wire and then insert it into the cone, the sugar chystalises around the wire and is really stable , also I do put a little hook on the end of the wire by bending over just the tip to give the cone a bit begger surface to hold onto. I use this method for orchid centres too , especially when I don't have a lot of time for them to dry.

I switched from making my cones out of sugar paste (Flower paste ) to using polystyrene, i bought a couple of egg shaped balls from the craft shop, they come in all different sizes and ranged between 5 and 15 pence each , to attach my wire i used a dab of super glue, it holds strong and is really light, i also found this way, i can make much fuller, larger roses with less paste because i wasnt using so much for the center