Sugar primroses

I have just realised how long ago I last wrote a blog post. I have a backlog of baking to post about now! I may as well get started anyway!

At the cake icing class I've been going to we learned to make sugar primroses. These took a very long time - each flower head needs to be cut out using a primrose cutter, frilled using a cocktail stick (this is when you roll a cocktail stick along the edges of the petals to thin them and make them a bit frilly), bent into shape and attached to a wire. The flowers need to be left to dry (this doesn't take very long if they are made using flower paste). Once you have lots of flowers, each has to be wrapped with florist tape and then eventually all taped together. So they took a long time, but for a first attempt I was pretty pleased with the result.

I then made a Madeira cake so that I could ice it and use the flowers as decoration. Madeira cake is good for making decorative cakes as it is less crumbly than an ordinary sponge cake. It also has a good vanilla flavour which goes well with the jam and icing used to finish it. Unfortunately I can't remember exactly which recipe I used! I googled Madeira cake and after comparing several, just decided to use one of them! They all seemed very similar so I basically chose the one that had the right quantity for the size of tin which I had.

I sliced the cake in half horizontally and put jam in between the two halves, then covered the outside of the cake in jam as well. I coloured some fondant icing pale yellow and used this to cover the cake. The lines are made by a little wheel tool so they are dotted rather than just lines. I added some glitter to add something extra then added the flowers. This cake (as with a lot of the cakes I make) was taken to work. The flowers, however, I have saved!