Decorating a cake with fresh flowers

Cakes covered in real flowers are awesome. Naked cakes are super popular at the moment, and with those rustic, cutesy cakes have come flowers – big, small, pastel, bold, spiky, flowing…you get the point. Combining delicious cake with gorgeous flowers is a glorious idea, but the concept can seem foreign to some people, so I’ve put together some tips to help you take your cake to the next level.

Most of these steps are aimed at making sure that your flowers are safe to be placed on a cake – you don’t want nasties getting on your beautiful cake.

Preparation:

• First, you obviously need a cake. I’ve got an awesome three tiered vanilla cake (pictured above) or a rich chocolate cake.
• Grab some flowers from your garden, or local flower shop. Try to get flowers that haven’t been sprayed with pesticides. Pick the flowers as close to serving time as possible so they don’t wilt.
• Not sure what flowers to use? Roses are always stunning, as are dahlias and marigolds – it’s pretty hard to go wrong when you’re combining flowers and cake. My advice would be to stay away from strong-smelling flowers, as the small can linger on the cake.
• If you can find edible flowers, even better! I love using edible flowers – they’re a bit of a novelty and they’re a really easy way to beautify a dish. I learned that roses are edible (don’t recommend eating them though!) Check out my edible flowers guide here.
• Wash the flowers thoroughly (inside and out) and set them aside to dry completely. If you’re in a hurry, pat them dry with a paper towel. As you can see, I found one little friend who could have ended up taking residence on my cake if it were not for this step.
• Strip your flowers of most of the leaves. You can always add extra leaves later on if you choose to.
• Remove any large thorns/ spikes if the flowers have them.
• Cut stalks of your flowers so that they’re only a couple of centimetres long, group in the desired manner, then wrap a rubber band around them as high up the stalks as you can manage.
• Set the flowers on a strip of baking paper and trace around them very closely using a pencil. Cut the shape out.

Decorating:

• Grab your piece of baking paper and rest it on the part of the cake you would like it to go. If it’s the right spot, smooth the baking paper out so that it sticks well to the icing.
• Place your flowers on the baking paper, then lift up the stalks and pipe some excess icing underneath them to hold them in place.
• Pipe some accents to echo the shape of the flowers. This is great because it can cover up any excess baking paper that may be poking out, and it adds a touch of professionalism to your cake.
• Place in the fridge until ready to serve.

Enjoy! Let me know which flowers are your favourite to put on cakes.

*Note: if you want to insert your stems into the cake, consider wrapping the base of the stems in masking tape, inserting the stems of the flowers into a small section of bubble tea straw, then putting the straw in the cake. You don’t want to risk the stem weeping into the cake.

Planning on decorating your cake with flowers? Tag me on Instagram and use #bakingwithgab so I can see your gorgeous floral arrangements! Or share a picture with me on Facebook.