Just a spoonful of Sugar

O.K. O.K. so it takes much more then a spoonful to make these wonderful creations, but it is pretty much just sugar.

I started learning the ropes of sugar flowers recently and I have to say that I am in love. I have always had a thing for flowers, and I absolutely love that the delecacy of the petals can carry over into sugar.

 The apple blossoms, blue rose and primrose are made from homemade royal icing. They were left out to harden and are now ready to adorn a cake.

The button flower ( lower right) and pansies are made from a fondant/gumpaste combination that were also left out to harden. The sugar flowers ( the ones made from royal icing) have a longer shelf life then the fondant/gum paste flowers, however both are wonderful to put on cakes or cupcakes.

The sugar flowers as i said are more delicate because you are able to make the petals so thin. If you notice on the pansies, there is a slight "curl" in the petals and they are paper thin. A very neat trick I think.

Mother's Day Tea

I was asked to make a desert for a Mother's Day Tea that someone I knew was hosting. The theme was butterflies. At each place table there was a butterfly centerpiece and a few facts about butterflies. I went through a few idea books i have and came up with these.

I decided these were best because they can be any color you want. The colors are made with sugar. So any color you can mix, you can use to tint the sugar. The big surprise that turns out to be very simple, is the the flower petals are marshmallows. YES, MARSHMALLOWS! The first time I saw these I couldn't figure out for the life of me what these were made of. When i found out, it then seemed so obvious.

A few extras

Here is a cake I made a couple weeks ago. The cake was red velvet with cream cheese frosting as the filling. I made a point of letting crumbs end up in the frosting. I mixed it all up and it put red "speckles" allover the cake. It gave a little hint of what flavor the cake was. Plus it was fun and different.

I tinted frosting red to make the butter cream ribbon roses. I know they don't look super red, but to make the icing a true red you have to use an extreme amount of red coloring. Besides, I like the tint of red that these ended up.

 That same evening I was practicing on cupcake decorations and tried a sunflower design.

 The center is a chocolate candy. The cupcake itself is also filled with chocolate. A group of these would be nice for a summer tea party or place settings.