I will be doing a wedding cake in a few weeks and of course the cake my client picked out was done in fondant but she wants buttercream instead. The cake has cascading flowers down the sides of the four tiers. What is the best way to attatch the flowers to the soft buttercream so that they aren't falling off? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

If they are heavier gumpaste flowers I would suggest wiring them and then using posy picks so that they are anchored into the cake. When I use posy picks I fill the them with a little fondant to help anchor in the wires.

If you make the flowers out of royal icing, you can make them directly onto wires. Or you can pipe "calyxes" onto wires with green icing, and stick the dried flowers onto those with more green icing.

If you don;t use wires, make sure you use egg white royal icing (NOT meringue). When the flowers are dry, pipe green spikes on the backs with a star tip like Ateco #18 and let that dry. This will allow the flowers to be stuck into the sides and they will hold.

DO NOT make buttercream flowers as they WILL fall off the sides even if they are air dried. Been there, done that...my good friend didn't mind as her guests just picked the fallen flowers off the plates and ate them...but it was a lesson to me.

If the cascading flowers are air-dried buttercream roses, you construct the cascade from the bottom up rather than cascading down the sides so each rose is actually being supported by the roses below instead of being stuck only to the sides of the cake. Piped leaves also help to keep them attached to one another.