How To Secure Flowers To A Buttercream Cake
Decorating By sugarxosugar143 Updated 26 Aug 2011 , 12:04pm by sugarxosugar143
my grandmas 90th bday is this weekend and my family is throwing her a surprise bday party. im making a 2 tier cake for her with buttercream frosting. My mother wants flowers to cascade down the side of it, which i am nervous about because i've never done that affect on a non fondant covered cake. im going to use floral wire in each flower, my question is does anyone have any tips on how to do this without the wires tearing through the cake from the weight of the flowers? and will royal icing also help as a glue? TIA! 
If you are using wires you might not want to put them directly into the cake, you may want to get a flower/posy pick (Any store that sells Wilton items should have them) to secure your flowers into the cake without the wires going into your cake.
HTH
-Karen
karen is right about not putting wires directly in a cake but.....instead of the posy pick use very thin drink straws. In fact I think plastic coffee stir sticks are 'hollow' so you can put a wired flower in it.
Those posy picks are thick and combersome 
They alone could tear the cake.
You must be using fondant or gp to make your flowers if you are putting wires in them. You know you can make them w/o wires? Then all you need to do is start at the bottome of your cake tiers and pipe an open circle of icing on the back of the flower and work up. That icing will create a suction and help hold it to the cake and each new flower will be supported by the one under it. That is the method I have used for yrs.
Then there is one last option: Pipe a *very!* thick/wide 'swag' of icing and nestle the flowers into it. When serving, this extra icing is scraped aside.
karen is right about not putting wires directly in a cake but.....instead of the posy pick use very thin drink straws. In fact I think plastic coffee stir sticks are 'hollow' so you can put a wired flower in it.
Those posy picks are thick and combersome
They alone could tear the cake.You must be using fondant or gp to make your flowers if you are putting wires in them. You know you can make them w/o wires? Then all you need to do is start at the bottome of your cake tiers and pipe an open circle of icing on the back of the flower and work up. That icing will create a suction and help hold it to the cake and each new flower will be supported by the one under it. That is the method I have used for yrs.
Then there is one last option: Pipe a *very!* thick/wide 'swag' of icing and nestle the flowers into it. When serving, this extra icing is scraped aside.
i have used regular wire inserted into a straw and fondant all the time, the floral wire i bought for these flowers were from a cake supply shop and they have a thin layer of something over them so i assumed they were cake safe. dont matter anyway lol all my flowers fell off the wires last night, so im going to try your method with the open circles. thank you!
I've actually used melted white chocolate to attach my flowers to the wires. It's like cement.
mommachris
You don't really need wires unless you want them..flowers can cascade down the side of the cake without them. I've done several.
http://cakecentral.com/gallery/1749485
http://cakecentral.com/gallery/2113030
http://cakecentral.com/gallery/1885204/1885205
I just used buttercream to adhere them.
I used gum paste for the flowers because you can roll gum paste very thin and it's very light when it dries.
Royal icing works well too.
looks like im going to have to use the covered wires adhering them with white chocolate, my flowers are pretty decent size and putting them on the cake with just buttercream doesnt seem to be working. they're a bit heavy, maybe because i used fondant with tylose instead of gumpaste? ah well, ill figure something out! thanks everyone for all your input!
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