Gumpaste Roses

Last year I signed up to do Chef Nicholas Lodge's "Ultimate Sugar Rose" class on www.craftsy.com, but it was only earlier this year that I finally made time to watch and learn from it. Chef Nicholas is a wonderful teacher, with a wealth of knowledge and experience to share, and I would definitely recommend his Craftsy classes. He even inspired me to try making my own gumpaste, which was far less difficult that you might think.

With a new skill to try out, when Valentine's Day rolled around and when I got to celebrate my (gasp!) fortieth birthday, I had a great time making a whole lot of sugar roses. I have to confess, though, that I have yet to complete a rose with a calyx! *blush* Still, I was pretty happy with the results.

 For the Valentine cake I used Satin Ice Fondant, which I found pretty tasty and easy to work with, and much easier than trying to make a homemade red fondant (I inevitable find that enough gel coloring to make a good strong red leaves the fondant tasting really bitter):

        

For my birthday cake I tried making Swiss Meringue buttercream for the first time. All I can say is wow! So silky and rich, and not as sweet as regular buttercream. It is quite a lot of extra work to make it, so I will probably save it for special occasions. I also finally used my patterned buttercream scraper for the cake sides, which I've had for ages and never used before!

So even though I haven't been posting much here, I'm still experimenting, learning and making plenty of cakes!