Sugar flowers: how to make sweet peas

Following the calla lilies I made in my sugar flowers evening class I want to share with you the next type of flower we made - sweet peas. These are very pretty though fairly small, so would look good with one flower on top of a cupcake or with a spray on top of a larger cake.

Once again you need a dedicated cutter - or can make your own template, but this only cost a few pounds from Amazon.

To start, you need to roll out some flowerpaste so it is very thin and then cut a small teardrop-shaped piece either using a small rose petal cutter or your own template. Use a balling tool to curl the edges by placing the shape on a foam pad and rubbing the tool around the edge, half on the flowerpaste and half on the foam pad.

Take a piece of florist wire - quite thin, so 26 or 28 gauge - and make a small sausage shape from your sugarpaste. Insert the florist wire and then wrap the teardrop shape around it, folding in half. This will form the centre of the flower.

Cut out two pieces of flowerpaste using the sweet pea cutter.

Take the piece with the notch cut out (the top one in the above picture) and spread a little edible glue in the centre. Then, holding the cut out notch at the top line up the notch with the centre of your flower and wrap both side pieces around it, leaving an opening, like you can see below.

Take the other petal and rub the edges with a balling tool as before to curl them. Carefully insert a thin piece of florist wire - 30 gauge is good for this - into the petal. I found it quite hard to do this without the wire poking through - you can try making your flowerpaste petal a little thicker if you are having trouble.

Stand the petal behind the ones you have already made, and bind the two pieces of wire together with florist tape.

 We then made the calyx with a calyx cutter. You either need to roll this out on a board with holes - known as Mexican hat holes - or you can manually pinch together some of the flowerpaste to make the part that sticks up, as you can see here.

Slide the calyx up through the wires and bend the leaves outwards. I think a little bunch of these together could look quite realistic!

Sugar flowers: how to make an Arum or Calla Lily

Lilies are probably my favourite flower but unfortunately they are one of the most toxic to cats – and I love my little kitty far more than I love lilies! So when I took an evening class course in sugar flowers recently I was really pleased when the tutor said we were going to make lilies – so I now have a bunch in my hallway that are not poisonous to cats!

 

 

Like most sugar flowers I am discovering, the technique is not rocket science, but you need to follow a very specific set of instructions to make a realistic looking flower – and have the right cutter. You could make a cardboard template but as you can actually buy arum lily cutters in various sizes it makes life a bit easier to do that.

 

You need to use flower paste – not sugar paste or modelling paste, as this is the only one you can roll out thin enough. I made my flowers white but if you want you could colour the sugar paste – I recommend the Sugarflair edible gel colours.

 

White is really the best colour though, with a yellow centre – I think called the pistil. So colour a small piece of sugarpaste yellow and roll it into a sausage shape.

 

Take a piece of florist wire – a medium thickness of around 26 works well. The lower the number gauge, the thinner and bendier the wire – so 18 would be too thin and wouldn’t support the petal and 30 would be too thick.

 

Bend the end using pliers into a little hook, apply some edible glue and insert into your sausage shape. This is your pistil.

 

 

The way we learned to make the centre of the flower look more realistic is a really cute little trick. Take some couscous or better still polenta, and mix in a little yellow dusting powder. Coat the outside of the pistil with edible glue and roll in the polenta so it sticks. Leave to dry.

 

Roll out a small ball of flower paste until it is very thin, and cut out a petal shape.

 

Using a ball tool on a foam pad, rub the edges of the petal – the ball end of the tool needs to be half on the edge of the petal, half off. This will make the petal curl up at the edges. Apply some edible glue to the bottom of the pistil and stick the petal around it, with the widest part of the petal at the bottom and the point at the top, wrapping the lower part of the petal around the pistil. Leave to dry.

Finally using a paintbrush and some green dusting powder lightly dust the bottom of the flower.

 

I wanted to have a go at making leaves; my set of lily cutters came with a leaf cutter as well. The easiest way to do this is to use a grooved cutting board – when you roll out the sugarpaste on top, a little bit goes into the groove, so when you turn it over, you have a raised ridge. Insert a piece of florist wire – in this case you probably do want the thinner 18 gauge – into the ridge. It’s quite tricky to do this without the wire poking out the leaf so it might take a few attempts to get the hang of it – I wouldn’t want to have to make a lot of these!

 

 

We only made one lily in that class but at the end of the course we made a whole bouquet using different flowers we had made over the previous three weeks; I did mainly lillies with some white roses as well as you can see here. I couldn’t find a vase that was the right size so this is actually an ice cream sundae dish, which I stuffed with green tissue paper! It now has pride of place in my hallway and I’m really pleased with it.
 

Sugar Flowers: how to make a carnation

I  recently took a short course in making sugar flowers at my local adult education college. We learnt how to make carnations, lillies, sweet peas and roses (about the ninth time I've done roses on a cake decorating course!) and also watched a demonstration of how to make frangipane. In the last class we could make whatever we wanted from the past few weeks to create our own bouquet.

 

It's amazing how different the techniques are for making different flowers and how much they do actually look like the real thing! For the carnations, we had to buy a carnation cutter; you can get them from cake decorating shops (online or in person) though I got mine from Amazon. You need to make sure you get ones with more detail around the edges as this helps make the flowers more realistic.

 

 

 

To begin you need to make the centre of the flower that the petals will go around. Take a length of florist wire, about 26 or 28 gauge (the higher the number, the thinner it is) and cut into three pieces. Take a small amount of flower paste in the colour you are going to make your flower, and one double-ended flower stamen (again you can buy all this from cake decorating shops or Amazon; I picked up a lot of supplies when I went to the Cake International cake show a few years back). 

 

 

Using pliers bend the end of the wire into a tiny hook, and thread the stamen through it so both ends are pointing upright. Take a tiny ball of flower paste, wrap around the bottom of the stamen and leave to dry.

 

Roll out some flower paste very thinly and use the cutter to cut out one petal (do one at a time or they will go dry; cover your flower paste in clingfilm or put it in an airtight bag while you are not using it).

Use a friller tool or ball tool to curl the edges of each part of the petal. Rest it on a foam pad to do this - a hard surface won't work.
 

 

Push the wire through the petal and bring the petal up to the top to meet the centre and stamen, and fold the petal in half.

Wrap one side of the petal in towards the centre and wrap the other side of the petal outwards so it looks something like this:

 

 

Repeat the process by cutting out a petal, frilling the edges and pushing through the wire. Don't fold this one though - sit it behind the petal you've already added and shape it upwards slightly.

 

Repeat with a third petal so it sits outside the other two and should look something like this. 

 

We also made a green calyx - the leaves that are attached to the bottom of the flower. You can buy a calyx cutter in different sizes or cut out the shape yourself freehand.
 

 

You need a small ball or raised part in the centre as you can see here:
 

 

Push the wire through so the calyx sits under the flower and curl the edges. Finally snip off the excess stamen so they don't stick too far out of the flower.

 

The largest carnation cutter I could find wasn't actually that big so I think these flowers would look great on cupcakes, or as a spray if you made several, to go on top of a larger cake - my mum likes carnations so I might have to do this for her birthday next year!

 

How to Make a Wired Sugar Flower: A Step-by-Step Guide

Wired sugar flowers look very realistic and are a beautiful way to top off a cake. I'd tried to make one at home before but didn't really understand what I was supposed to be doing - and realise now that I didn't have the right equipment! But as regular readers will know I recently took a 10-week evening course in wedding cake decorating at South Thames College and our second cake project involved a wired sugar flower. Isn't it beautiful?

I will explain how we made the whole cake later, but for now I'm going to concentrate on how to make the wired flower.

Here's what you will need; click on the links to buy the products from Amazon.

1 KG Sugar Florist Paste (you don't need 1kg, but this is good value. You can also get smaller packets like this Renshaw Flower and Moulding Paste

Food colouring - I prefer to use the paste kind. For this flower I used two parts
Sugarflair KIWI Green Pastel Paste Gel Edible Food Icing Colouring 25G to one part
Sugarflair Spectral Concentrated Paste Colour - Gooseberry

Culpitt 26 Gauge White Florist Wires - Sugar Flowers/Floristy

5 Star Scissors with Rubber Handles 160mm Ref 909280 or similar to cut the wire

A rose petal cutter - you only need the large petal for this project: Sugarcraft & Cake Decorating Cutters -Rose Petals Extra Large For Celebration Cakes- Perfect for Wedding Cakes And Sugarcraft

8pc Sugarcraft Cake Modelling Tool Set

PME sugarcraft Foam pad

PME 6in Non Stick Rolling Pin


Non-Stick Groved Board (6" x 5.75") with non-slip mat - this is crucial and the reason why my first attempt at home went wrong!

JEM No 12 Petal Veiner / Friller Tool

Approx. 170Pcs Pearl Double-Tipped Floral Flower Stamens for Flower Making - White though you won't need that many for one flower

Moss Green Stem Tape 90 feet x 13mm. Stem - Tex. For Corsages, Bouquets, Flowers, Arrangements and Crafts.

PME White Flower Picks (Small (12))
.... that is quite a long list, but believe me it's worth it, and most of it you can use again and again! And it really is crucial to have the right equipment - and now I'm going to tell you what to do with it!

Start off with your stamens. We cut them in half as they were quite long; start to bunch about 15-20 together.

Bind tightly to a wire with the florist tape; this will be the centre of your flower.

If you want to colour your flowerpaste do that first, then take a small piece and knead it. Roll a small ball and flatten onto your grooved board, so one of the grooves - the largest one is easiest - is in the middle.

When you roll out the sugarpaste over the groove and then turn the sugarpaste over, you will have a raised part - this is the channel for the wire.

Use your petal cutter to cut out the shape of the petal making sure the 'channel' is in the middle

Cut a piece of wire to about a 4-5 inch length and carefully slide it into the channel in the middle fo the petal, being careful not to poke the wire through the icing.

Take the veining tool and roll from side to side on the petal. I actually did this on the wrong side - you need to turn it over as the channel for the wire will be on the bottom of the flower.

Take a balling tool and rub around the edge of the petal to make it lift up and curl a little. The trick to do this is to have the balling tool half on the petal, half on your foam pad.

Bend your wire and petal slightly - the best way I can think of to describe it is to think of a spoon after Uri Gellar has finished with it! Again mine is the wrong way up; the channel should be on the underneath.  I don't know why the petal looks yellow in this picture - something to do with the lighting.

Repeat several times, making three petals in each size - the flower cutter comes in three sizes. Leave them to dry in something like this paint palette as this will help the petals hold their curve as they harden. You want them to be hard and not floppy when you assemble the flower so you will need to leave these for a while.

Starting with the smallest petals, place them around the stamen, binding the wires together with florist tape as you go.

You can see two layers of petals here with the last ones - the largest, which I made a slightly paler colour - waiting to be added.

Here is the finished flower. To insert it into a cake, put the flower pick - a hollow plastic tube with a point at the end - into the cake. This is because you can't insert wires directly into the cake. Then place the wires into the plastic holder, and if necessary stop them from moving around inside the pick with a blob of icing.

 

Do you want a sneak peak of the cake that I used this flower on? Here it is - with its own blog post to follow! Making this flower took quite a long time so I'm very impressed by people who make several of them to go on a wedding cake!