Okay, so once again I haven't posted for ages. Hopeless, I know. And despite the fact that very likely the only person actually reading this is my mother, I am hereby making a... well, let's call it a New Financial Year's Resolution, to post here more regularly. I'm going to aim for once a week. God knows I bake often enough, I just never seem to get around to loading the photos up and writing something. But I have an excuse this time, I swear...
Some time ago, my very good friend announced her engagement to her man, and asked me to be one of her bridesmaids. In a fit of insanity following the joyful announcement, I also eagerly volunteered to make the cake. For the wedding. That I was a bridesmaid in. Having never made a wedding cake before. Hmmm....
As it happens, it actually wasn't a total disaster (huzzah!). However it did mean that I was rather insanely busy in the weeks leading up to the Big Day (which was earlier this month). And what was I busy with, you ask? (apart from dress fittings, phone calls about flowers, emails about shoes, the hen's night, the kitchen tea, and baking the actual cake itself, of course)? TULIPS, I answer. Yes, the bride and groom wanted gumpaste tulips on their cake, which is fine, except I've never made wired flowers before, so I was VERY stressed... I immediately turned to that font of all knowledge, Google, for inspiration, and after perusing several different methods suggested by many different cake artists, I sort of took some of all their tips on board and then winged it.
.
The first decision I made was that I really did not need to do all the little stamens etc inside the tulips, as the bride and groom had sti
pulated that they wanted the tulips almost closed. So a) it would have been a waste of time as they wouldn't have been visible anyway, and b) these were after all my first ever wired flowers, and I was nervous enough as it is without having to think about stamens, thanks. So I went with the solid-cone-of-gumpaste-in-the-middle method (yes, that is a technical term, people. You may use it if you wish). I then wired the cone, marked it and left it to dry. Then I glued the inner petals straight onto the gumpaste cone using egg white, and left that to dry whilst I made the scary bits - the wired petals. After some swearing etc, I managed to get the hang of poking the wire into the teeny ridge along the centre of each petal, and of veining the petal without 
having the wire poke through; and after a few failed attempts with aluminium foil, I finally had the idea of laying each petal over an egg to dry. This worked, and gave a nice shape, I think. Then I just needed to tape the outer petals on (which took a LOT longer than I thought it would - is this normally a slow process, or am I just really bad at it??) and my tulips were ready to be dusted, steamed, and left for a final drying. I was pretty happy in the end, I think they're not too bad for a first attempt!
pulated that they wanted the tulips almost closed. So a) it would have been a waste of time as they wouldn't have been visible anyway, and b) these were after all my first ever wired flowers, and I was nervous enough as it is without having to think about stamens, thanks. So I went with the solid-cone-of-gumpaste-in-the-middle method (yes, that is a technical term, people. You may use it if you wish). I then wired the cone, marked it and left it to dry. Then I glued the inner petals straight onto the gumpaste cone using egg white, and left that to dry whilst I made the scary bits - the wired petals. After some swearing etc, I managed to get the hang of poking the wire into the teeny ridge along the centre of each petal, and of veining the petal without 
having the wire poke through; and after a few failed attempts with aluminium foil, I finally had the idea of laying each petal over an egg to dry. This worked, and gave a nice shape, I think. Then I just needed to tape the outer petals on (which took a LOT longer than I thought it would - is this normally a slow process, or am I just really bad at it??) and my tulips were ready to be dusted, steamed, and left for a final drying. I was pretty happy in the end, I think they're not too bad for a first attempt!Anyway, here is a photo of the final cake. All four tiers were fruit cake, iced with white sugarpaste (no marzipan).
So, in conclusion, it is in fact possible to be a bridesmaid and make the wedding cake too. It helps if it's fruit cake (no last-minute baking). And it's absolutely necessary to be able to deliver it the day before the wedding. And if one didn't have a two-year-old to look after at the same time, I'd imagine the whole thing would be... well... a piece of cake... ;o)
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