...but I think they hate me more!! LOL I'm a beginner but I do have the technique down, my problem is my frosting. It's hard to practice your technique when your frosting keeps pooping out on you. lol
I made a batch of BC, filled one bag for petals and another for bases. Same exact frosting, same exact consistency. I get the base piped out all perfect and pretty and as soon as I put the center on, the base mooshes over and just keeps mooshing more and more as I add petals. At this point I'm too frustrated to try again. Maybe I will just never make a cake with roses. lol I'm wondering about either making a separate batch of icing, extra super stiff for the bases or even making a bunch of bases and freezing them and adding the petals onto frozen bases. Any insight to either of these ideas would be great or even other suggestions on how to make stable bases. I just know if my bases stayed upright while I was piping on the petals, I could make some pretty roses. HELP, please!!

Use Hershey Kisses as your base. Just stick one on the nail with a little buttercream,then just pipe the petals as usual.

Here's a slightly different technique for making the base:

http://tinyurl.com/um8rp

And here's there's no flower nail:

http://www.cakecentral.com/article50-Making-Buttercream-Roses-on-a-Stick.html

HTH

P.S. ....who doesn't hate poopy frosting!!!

I haven't tried the Kisses base as yet (there just never seem to be left when I'm ready to make roses), but I have made either fondant or gumpaste bases on toothpicks, they work great.

Having that solid base should help your roses hold up, it definitely made a difference with mine!
Janice

When I make the toothpick bases, I just make a bunch at a time shaped like a rose bud, stick them in a piece of styrofoam, let them dry, and then they are ready when I need them (unlike the Kisses).

I guess if you didn't want/need the toothpick, you can remove them when they have set but once they hardened the toothpick doesn't come out of there! HTH Janice

I tried the Hershey's kiss base for the first time last week, and Wow! The first two were disasters--they slipped right off of the flower nail, even though I used a good sized dab of icing under the Kiss.

I then had the idea of putting a round toothpick into the bottom of the Kiss, and using that like a nail/base combo. It worked wonderfully.

RP

I always freeze my bases. It helps a lot!

I want to try the Hershey's Kiss method, though. Sounds good.

And here I thought I was the only one with poopy rosting. No matter what I try with frosting I can't seem to get the consistency right to make stiff beautiful roses. They always smoosh together.

Thank you everyone for these great ideas. I can't wait to try them. Maybe I'll make a chocolate caramel cake with caramel kiss roses. mmm mmm

Well you are really ahead of me cuz I can't get that technique down for Buttercream roses and swore I will never make one because it is so difficult for me! Matter of fact, I can't seem to pipe anything decent with Buttercream!

Well maybe my moniker should be "I hate Buttercream!"

I used to be a cake decorator at a grocery store and I would pipe out roses out of my *bleep*!!!!!!!!1I ALWAYS used the stick method but I scraped them off with scissors(tip) and placed them on the cake.
yes buttercream is a pain when it comes to roses, BUT if you have a hot hand(like me) then you should consider freezing the bag before putting the icing in , then put the icing in it, then freeze it some more, or keep it cool in between roses.that is what works for me.it is near impossible for me to work with buttercream in a bag without letting it cool or be near frozen first.

hope this helps!!!!

I have *very* hot hands, and what seems to work well for me is that I fill a large Ziploc bag with ice water, and keep it on the table. Between roses (or periodically when doing other piping work), I rest my hands on the cold bag for a few moments.

Much more pleasant than my previous method of keeping a bowl of ice cubes on the table and rubbing an ice cube on my hands and then drying my hands between roses.

RP

Ha! Ha! Ha! Milosmami! Piping roses out of your BLEEP!

Oh, and I have tried pretzels which worked well.
Going to try the Kiss and freezing the bases.
I also have a hot hand so will try freezing my bag. Good ideas.

This is one of the reasons why I do NOT do piped roses.. I stick to Fondant. They look nicer and more "handy". and they can last forever in my pantry

Hershey kisses work so well! I started doing it after posting about the same thing and my roses look so much better! I use frosting to stick the kisses on the squares of wax paper and let them set a few minutes so they don't slide.

As a kid, I remember a particular bakery's cakes had cherries under the BC roses. I am assuming now that they used these roses as a base onto which to pipe the roses and then stuck them on the cake. Am I right in making this assumption?

I use to have the hardest time making roses also, and then one day I was at a friend's house (with birthday cake) and she had wanted roses on her cake, which I didn't realize. She lives near a Walmart, so we went to Walmart and I bought a bag, tips, flower nail and a tub of Wilton's decorator icing. We were too far from my house for me to go home and get anything. Well.......my roses came out perfect!!!! I couldn't believe it! I have vowed to only use Wilton's decorator icing for roses from now on. I don't do that many, so it is not really cost prohibitive for me to buy the small tub when I need it.

I am going to try the hershey kiss method....I think I have some at home (unless I ate them )

~Chelle

RedPanda, thanks for the Ziplock bag tip. I have hot hands too and need something handy to keep them cool.

I have major problems doing BC roses but can do the fondant and gumpaste roses with no trouble?! Have you tried doing roses with royal icing? I like the stiffness of the royal icing instead of BC only because I'm not used to making stiff BC. I also have better luck with tip #98 - it curls the edges of the roses perfectly.

Thanks everyone. I think I will try the pretzle thing too.
At least in class when the roses poop out, the teacher knows it's because the room is not kept very cool and we kind of over use the frosting as we practice. My roses I did in class satisfied the teacher so for now, that's all that counts. In the mean time, I better get to the store and get some kisses and pretzles and get crackin'! Chocolate covered pretzles sound much better than BC roses though.


(I'm a little envious of those of you that have room in your homes to make extra stuff, such as frosting and whatnot, to keep on hand. My house is so small it's like living in a closet and I have 0 extra space to put anything! lol)

Haha. I absolutely HATE my house. Thank goodness I only have to live in it for 10 more months!

LOVIN' the kisses! Thank all of you soooooooooo much who suggested them! So far they are sticking to the flower nail with BC just fine. I still need a lot of practice but now that I have a stable base, I'm motivated to practice again! The pretzles are working but I wouldn't call the flowers I'm making roses. The pic I am posting is my second try on the kiss and first on the pretzel. (I got so excited with the first rose on a kiss, I ate it! And I can't even stand BC. LOL)

Again, thank you so much for all the suggestions.

Lisa