Roses and Lace

For Nana's cake I wanted to use a new toy in my cake decorating cupboard a lace mat so I thought up an idea where I could give this a go and also try to make some fondant roses.
Not too long ago we lost our very beloved Grandad and it was a huge shock to us all, While we were up in Auckland for the funeral I remember Nana talking about how Grandad's favourite colour was purple, of course he loved anything she wore, but when she wore purple that was his favourite and very special, so in honour of Grandad I decided to make Nana's birthday cake a shade of purple.

A trick I learnt from from a class I took at The Make Company a less messy way to colour fondant is to buy coloured fondant and add it to white fondant until you get the colour you want.

Again, ever prepared I decided to make the roses ahead of time I watched a couple of videos on Youtube which you can find here and here I used a combination of both to help me.

I got all my tools together,and coloured my fondant. 

My tools a Flower Mat, my Wilton small rolling pin, Wilton Petal Pad, Wilton Dust Pouch and my 5 petal cutters and Wilton Rose Buds.

Firstly I rolled out all the colours, I wanted to make an Ombre Rose so used White for the outer edges and the darker purple as the bud and first couple of petals and the bulk of the rose was the lighter purple. I used the 3 smaller petal cutters and cut a variety of the 3 on the different colours, just to get a feel for the sizes.

Layering with Glad Wrap so the petals don't dry out.

Using the Wilton Petal Pad I used the ball tool to thin the outer edges of the petals and give it shape, Then I flipped it over and placed on the Wilton Petal Sponge and again used the ball tool, this time in the middle of the petal to hollow it out. 

Using s very small amount of my edible glue, Tylose powder mixed with water, I attached the petals on. What I found doing these roses was the "stem" kept falling out of bud so next time I would glue, with actual glue, it into the bud well a head of time. This meant that I couldn't hang the roses upside down to dry which just meant that the petals tended to "peel" down as I was adding and I had to hold them in place while they dried, but one positive tip I learnt is to hold it up to the heat pump on a cool cycle it dries fondant out very fast, this was a big help.

The roses certainly aren't perfect but I was happy with them and now know tricks for the next time and by the 3rd rose I could definitely see an improvement.

 Here is a couple of close ups.

This was the first time I had ever tried to make the lace. I already had some Flexipaste in the cupboard which is in powder form and you make it up, but as I was reading the instructions I found that I would have to make the whole lot up at once and didn't think I would need it all so one of the items I bought from the cake shop was some pre-mixed Claire Bowman cake lace, I had wanted pearl but they were out of stock so I got the silver and in hindsight I think the silver worked really well and I don't think the pearl would have.

 Ha, really Amy, you wont need to use all of the Flexipaste, what a joke it took me 8 attempts to get the cake lace perfect and I did end up using all of the pre-mixed cake lace but never mind its all lessons and now next time I will know exactly what I need to do. I can't wait to make it again.

I watched a couple of different videos on Youtube which you can find  here and here, but I mainly used the first one as it is one by Claire Bowman. The easiest thing is spreading the mix, I just spooned some on and using a really good, sharp and not too flexible, spatula spread it out and be careful to make sure the it fills all the indentations otherwise you'll have a holy lace in all the wrong places.

When the picture of the cake came into my head I wanted to have the lace in the middle of the cake so I didn't want a edge on the lace, but as I was trialing I decided to try out another design as well and this had an edge so you would either use as a border on the top or bottom of cake, and decide when putting the cake together which I would use.

After cooking at all different temperatures and all different timings, what worked for me and my oven was 120 degrees C on fan bake and baking for 15 minutes.

I decided on chocolate cake and again I used my favourite cake pans my Wilton Easy Layers.

This was the first time I had tried to make chocolate buttercream, I didn't look for a recipe but instead I just used Chelsea Rich Choclate Icing Sugar as a subsitute for normal white icing sugar and it was absolutely beautiful I would definitely make it again.

Into the fridge to set.

 To make my purple fondant I mixed Purple fondant into my white, you are supposed to do this a little bit at a time but I went bull at a gate and put to much in so I had to open a second white fondant and mix it in but I was happy with the final colour.

Now to decorate the fun part! I had already decided to put the roses on top, after putting them on top I did wonder if they were to big, but decided I liked the look of the over sized roses on the wee cake.

As I said before I had already planned what lace I wanted to put on when I had the cake idea in my mind, but after making the 2 different laces I decided I preferred the lace as a border around the bottom of the cake.

Put it all together and what do you get?