Sugar update

Mum celebrated her 94th birthday today and I made her this 8" cake.   The design is neat and comes from a thick plastic mat with flowers cut out from the plastic.    See the photograph below. To use it, simply roll out your fondant to the normal thickness you prefer, then place the mat on top of the fondant and roll over the mat with your rolling pin quite firmly to force the fondant into the cut out spaces, which gives raised flowers.  These can either be left as is, or, while the mat is still on the fondant, use edible dusting powder to colour the flowers and leaves.  In this case I used blue, pink and green dusting powders, and then went over the whole thing, still with the mat in place, with a perle dust.    Then I roll up the fondant onto a long thin rolling pin and place over the cake and unroll carefully.  With the pattern on the fondant you can't smooth the fondant as much as would with plain fondant.  This is the mat.  It is a good size, 18" x 24" and is available at Creative Cutters in Richmond Hill, Ontario. 

Jack (my grandson) always gets to choose his birthday cake.  This year Star Wars is his passion and Nana obliged!  These funny figures are all Star War characters and were really pretty fiddly to do in colorflow.  But it was well received and kids don't notice the imperfections like we do!