Hi Everyone!

Blimey it has been quite a while since I have been on cakecentral, as stopped baking when I had my son, must say its nice to be back!

Anyhoo Im back up and running now and I have a question!!

Hopefully my image will have attached. I am making a variation of this cake for a friend of mine, I have done lots of cakes with flowers etc but none quite like this, how would you attach the flowers?

Would you use sugar glue and build it bit by bit to ensure the roses below dry a bit before adding the next layer?

Or would you use cocktail sticks in each rose and push into the cake?

OR would you do a combination of both?

I dont want the cake looking to much of a wreck once it is served I assume all the flowers will need to be removed.

Anyway hope someone will be able to help, your comments will be much appreciated!

Anna

Welcome back! from an ex Essex girl!!
Its a beautiful cake. By far the best advice someone gave me for 'sticking' things to the sides of cake, was to use melted white chocolate, it 'sets' hard really quick and holds really well. Obviously I would do it bit by bit to ensure no slipping! Good luck

I handmake all my roses (well most of my flowers really) on floral wire, which can then be inserted into the cake. See the picture attached.
http://cakecentral.com/gallery/2247745/cascading-roses

Thanks for replying!

Ive never thought of white chocolate! I may have to have a practice (good excuse to get a bar of chocolate out!) - where in essex were you from?

I also make my flowers on wires but personally I do not put wires straight into cakes (although expect that would be the easiest way to do it), when flowers are on top of a cake i use a flower pick, but dont think i can get that to work for this cake, which is why I was considering cocktail sticks, but worry they are too thick and considering the number of roses would just destroy the cake.

I always try to avoid wires if poss, however I saw a tip for inserting wires safely, insert a straw first cut flush with cake and pipe fill with royal icing then insert wire into this, that way the wires dont touch cake, not sure how well it works, and like you say would destroy the cake with so many! Cocktail sticks are also a worry in case of 'getting lost'! Do try the white chocolate, its great, I stuck some quite large fondant bows (quite heavy) onto the side of a cake with no problems, and as yours is gonna be a white cake it wont show at all!

I was from the outskirts of Essex, Waltham Abbey, now live in Cheshunt, Herts, you?

Hmm i reckon im gunna have to have a little try and see with this cake lol! Thankfully the base tier will be a dummy cake (otherwise there would be way too much cake and she def wants 5 tiers) so can use wires on that one and the next tier up is a fruit cake which I can also do in advance and is also pretty solid, which means the bottom two layers can be done a bit in advance giving me plenty of time should i need to reassess things!

Im currently on the outskirts too but on the Suffolk side a few villages away from Haverhill, but lived in Colchester for a few years.

I was going to say white chocolate too, if the cake is covered in fondant. Just be careful because once the flowers are put on and the chocolate hardens, you won't be able to reposition them without pulling a big hunk of fondant off!