Breakthrough

Today is the first day I feel like I might actually be able to make 100 cup cakes for the wedding that I can be proud of!

This has come about because we have been thinking about what flowers we'll have at the wedding and have decided on a sunflower theme. This in turn made me think about some 'daisy' cupcakes I had seen in Peggy Porschen's book. The daisies are made with sugarpaste and a PME daisy cutter.

I read all the instructions and on Monday sent for all the equipment and supplies. The parcel arrived today and the photo below shows my very first attempt at making sunflowers. Up close in the photo, I can see they're not perfect, but they are not bad for a first attempt - miles better than anything else I've created so far.

Also in the parcel are 30 dark pink piped roses. These are for my 50th birthday party cakes. I am cheating! Well, as many of the guests will also be guests at the wedding, I don't want to make 50 sunflower cakes for the party; it would spoil the surprise on the wedding day. And I don't think I can perfect roses and sunflowers both in the same week!

Green & Gold

We have decided on the colour theme for the wedding: green and gold. So for the last couple of batches of cakes, we've been buying all the gold and green food colourings we could lay our hands on. We have found the perfect green - it's called Holly Green and is just what we want. Gold is more difficult, and often looks more yellow than green. But we have discovered that painting some gold food colouring on white royal icing creates a good effect. We didn't do that for those pictured here... the reason this particular batch is on display is because it's the first batch where all teh cakes were reasonably presentable! We still have a long way to go - and only 7 months left now!!