Sunday bakes – Sugar Peony cake

As I mentioned on Friday, this year for Mum’s birthday we went big. This included her birthday cake. I decided to take the opportunity to try out my new sugar craft tools and have a first attempt at a sugar peony.

I chose a set of 4 individual peony petal cutters and a universal petal veiner.

I love the open coral peonies so I wanted my sugar peony to have this colouring. The general consensus on the web was that the dust paint was by far the best for this kind of work. I used a beige sugar paste as my base because the colour was the closest to the lighter end of the colour I wanted. 

I started with three small pea-sized balls of paste that were then rolled in my hand into an elongated teardrop shape and scored three times to the tip. I took some 28 gauge craft wire with a small loop in the end, dipped in the edible glue and fixed the paste onto the end. 

Once the centre pieces were dried I used a flat-tipped brush and painted the base of each with moss green, fading into blossom pink.

I grouped the pre-made stamen thread into three bundles and using the wire I spaced them around the dried and painted centre pieces splaying them out evenly with my fingers. 

Now the centre was ready I started work on the petals.

I used the second largest cutter and cut 10 petals out of the paste, which had rolled to about 1.5mm thickness.

Use the ball tool to give texture and to thin the edges even more.

I had a lot of trouble at first because the petals kept sticking to the mat so I started using cling film under the petals which seemed to help.

I had cut off some sections of tin foil and used my thumb shape to create mini cup shapes for the petals to rest and dry in. This gave them their closed shape. After working out the edges in circular movements, thinning the petals using the ball tool, I secured each petal on the end of a piece of wire using the same method as the centre pieces. I then curved them each slightly and placed them into the foil to dry. 

I repeated this for the 10 larger petals and left them to dry overnight.

After all the petals had dried I used the wide-tipped brush and painted the base of the petal in yellow, brushing upwards and then blended in the dusky pink finishing in a light coral.

Once all the petals were painted I began to add the petals to the centre group. Before I added each petal I bent the wire back just under the paste so the petal was tilted back at about a 45 degree angle. The first layer of petals were 5 of the smaller petals. 

The subsequent layers were offset and the wire secured together using tape. Ideally this would be florist tape but, like a fool, I forgot to order some so I made do with some microfiber dressing tape. Once all the petals were in place I tweaked the way they sat slightly until I was happy with how they looked and the cake topper was finished!