Gum Paste Flowers!

Today was an adventure!  I bought a living social deal to try a cake decorating class on how to make sugar flowers from The Sugar Flower Cake Shop in NYC!  I signed up and showed up to this awesome studio bakery in the fashion district!

Once the class got started, after thoroughly washing our hands (sing Happy Birthday 2x) we stood at our tables and started to learn how to make orchid petals out of gum paste.  We learned the difference between gum paste and fondant (which I never knew before!) and got started.  It was definitely something different, and you had to be very delicate.  The gum paste takes about 24 hours to dry, so we used some pre-prepared petals to assemble, and our samples will be used for future classes.

We had to carefully assemble the flowers, piece by piece and then we assembled a butterfly.  I learned some tips on how to better use a piping bag to pipe a cake with buttercream - we made 4in. cakes to bring home.  After everything was assembled separately (and our cakes but in the refrigerator to harden),we used edible colored dust to make our flowers even more colorful and then placed together for our basket of flowers.  Take a look at my cake basket and let me know your thoughts...I'm looking forward to making some more flowers, so stay tuned and BAKE ON!