Can you put floral wire directly into cakes to hold up decorations?

no. you need to put the wire in coffee stir sticks or something like that. hth

I'm so glad to see this post because I keep forgetting ... I don't normally watch Cake Boss - nothing against Buddy, I just don't watch - but it was on the other day. He was doing a cherry blossom cake and he was sticking the flowers directly into the cake. I know they were on wires, but does anyone know if he wrapped the wires in something to make them food safe?

Sorry, I'm a little slow--So you push the coffee straws into the cake so you cant see them and then put the wires into those? How does that work with fondant?

I don't use straws as the wire still may come into contact with the cake. I use cake spikes as they have a closed bottom.

Some people have recommended coating the wire in chocolate (melt and dip, let harden).

There's a lot that goes on 'behind the scenes' that we don't see (ie, what they do with the wires). But I wish they would. It would not only help the general public know about it, but those decorators who have never encountered it, don't know about the food safety factor, and who don't come to CC for all the good info!

I've heard before that some of the famous cake shops use the wire stuck straight into the cake. But just because we see it on TV doesn't make it right.

Anyhow, if the straw or coffee stir is pushed down far enough to touch the cake board then I just can't see how the wire could end up touching the cake. So I think a straw is good enough.

I have some of those flower spikes too but they make such a big hole in the cake that I wouldn't want to use it for just one wire.

well I would think there is a hole in the straw, and when inserted into the cake cake is inside the straw and when you put wire into straw, badabing, contact with cake hahaha....I think coating with chocolate would be good......however, I don't know that the wire touching cake would poison anyone and of course we are not talking about a "sterile" field hehe....people get worse from sticking fingers in there mouths I would think.

There was a lengthy thread on this topic a while back:

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-632290.html

It's full of information that you might find helpful. The very first entry is really important/interesting.
HTH

Well, the cake that goes into the straw stays in the straw. So unless you've got someone sitting there sucking the cake out of the straws (and my sister has done it, out of regular straws and out of the plastic dowels, she even got her finger stuck before trying to get a glob of buttercream out) then the cake stuck in the straw wouldn't get eaten.

For the record, the same sister also picked all of the wire stamens out of the fondant flowers that were around the base of her cake, and ate the flowers. She didn't die from eating fondant that had come into contact with wire.

lol............yes I think we have eaten worse.....how many spiders are we suppose to eat at night while asleep every year lol yikes