Adventures in cake decorating (part 3)

A few weeks ago we tackled what was probably my favourite part of my cake decorating course (which finished this week) – creating a lily with a sort of 3D effect out of Mexican paste.

First, we made the round base for the flower to go on and crimped it around the edges. Then, we used a lily patchwork cutter (this one) to make a slight imprint on the base to show us where to place the petals and leaves.

Next, we rolled out some Mexican paste mixed half and half with sugarpaste. It had to be really thin to create a delicate flower effect. We used the patchwork cutter to cut out the entire image and stuck the different parts to the base, which was a little fiddly – especially the pollen! We then used some dusting colours to lightly colour the lily.

The final bit was cutting out some more of certain of the petals and leaves to create the 3D effect. These were stuck to the flower already on the base, but we only put glue along one or two of the edges of the petals/leaves and kept some rolled up tissue under the loose parts to make sure they dried in the right way (if we hadn’t propped them up with tissue, they would have just dried flat). Finally, we brushed on another coating of colour.

Mexican paste lily close-up

I’m really pleased with my effort – it was by the far the best thing I did on the course! I really liked using the dusting colours and will definitely be looking to do something similar again soon.