Second Wedding Cake and Working With Gumpaste.

 Here is my latest masterpeice.

 This is the best cake I have ever made.  I have also never made anything that has taken SO LONG! It took me about a week.

This three tier beauty is made up of chocolate, (top) red velvet,(middle) and butter pecan cake, (bottom)  the top two tiers have a cream cheese butter cream filling, while the bottom has raspberry.  It is all dirty iced with cream cheese butter cream and covered in a beige colored fondant. the pearls are done in royal icing, dusted with, my favorite, pearl dust.

The flowers (there are about 140 of them) are each hand made out of gum paste. The centers are dusted with, you guessed it, pink pearl dust. An edible pearl was glued with royal icing in the center.

 The most time consuming part of the whole process would have to be the flowers, by far.  (though the most difficult part most definitely goes to dealing with the fondant)

 I did some research (thank you Google and Youtube) and decided to go with using gum paste, though I had never used it before.  It was new to me, and dried out quickly, but was also perfect for what I needed.  The flowers hardened nicely and would be ok in the freezer.

The gum paste(NOT made out of gum) was sticky, and hard to work with at times.  I had to knead it a lot before it was malleable enough to do anything with.  Once it was soft, it was a little like working with play-doh.

While I could have just rolled it all out and cut a bunch out at once and be done with it, but it probably would have looked a little blah.  Personally, I have to have things looking the best they can.  That means that each flower was made one at a time. (trying to do more than that, they would have dried out too fast to do the details).  They were formed into cones, with the edges rolled flat.  Then cut into a flower shape, rolling the petals out with a ball tool.  Then the detail in the center was cut in, then brushed with rose pink pearl dust.  Each flower took 5-10 minutes.  That is a LOT of hours.

I was so sleep deprived from making flowers till the wee hours of the night/morning.  add taking care of a baby.=one exhausted mama.

 I never would have finished it if it weren't for this beautiful gal.  My bestie had come over multiple times to help watch my little man, and make flowers.  She also rolled a layer of fondant so I could take a shower for the wedding (that is how close we cut it)Add in that she babysat while we were at the wedding and you have a life saver.

The little clusters of flowers at the bottom were my husbands idea.  Some of that bottom fondant was not so smooth.  Lucky for us, they were evenly spaced, making covering it up easy.

Isn't this couple beautiful?  They are very good friends of ours.  I am glad I was able to make this for their special day.  I even had multiple of their wedding guests ask me for a business card.  Gives me something to think about.