Daisy Cake and Cupcakes

"Something small and with daisies... my mom loves daisies" as requested by my co-worker. And that is how this daisy cake came about. It's been a year since I made the teapot cake for her mother; how quickly the year had passed.

"And oh, maybe little daisy cupcakes around it too, like a little garden of flowers!", she quickly added. Later during the day, she work e-mails me - Can we put a butterfly on it? (not real one) :). LOL. She's so cute.
I love making flower cakes, makes me happy just making them. And with butterflies! I can finally use my butterfly cutter bought on an whim. Thank you my friend, thank you.
"So, what flavor do you want?", I later ask her when she passed by my desk. "Some funky flavour would be nice!", she laughs, "but really, we leave it up to you, we always like your cakes." No pressure at all, right?
I've been cracking my brain trying to come up with some fancy flavors but lemon seems to be a fitting for this daisy cake. I made lemon chiffon cake and paired it with lemon buttercream frosting.To make the frosting, simply mix in some lemon curd with the buttercream. Ummm, pure heaven!

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DAISY CAKE
The cake itself was very simple. After icing the cake, I simply ran a Wilton cake combon the side. I then piped some "grass" with Wilton Decorating Tip 233/Ateco 133as the bottom border. I used the Juniper Green colour for the grass.

The most work done on this cake are the daisies, but they were not difficult to make at all. I made it as shown on the gum paste gerbera tutorial.What I did differently is that I thinned out the petals one by one by using what I call the pencil tool. You know, the gum paste tool that looks like a sharpened pencil but without the lead of course. There might be an actual name for it, so please do let me know. It came with the Wilton Gum Paste Flowers Kit. I simply rolled the tool from side to side on each petal to thin it out. I loved the way they came out.
I discovered another cake decorating tool in my kitchen, the grater. I used the grater to make the texture on the center of the cake. I just rolled a ball of yellow gum paste round and round around it. Fab isn't it?

For the large leaves used on top the cake, I used the leaf cutter that came with the Wilton gum paste kit. I pressed a dried corn husk on it to make some texture. I then let it dry on some crumpled up paper towel so that it does not dry flat.
The butterflies where made cut using the PME butterfly cutter. I embossed some flowers on the butterfly using an acrylic stamp.

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DAISY CUPCAKES
I made smaller daisies for the cupcakes. I used the smaller PME daisy cutter and used a painter's palette as formers to dry the flowers on.

For leaves, I used the daffodil cutter from the Wilton gum paste kit and thinned it with the pencil tool. I then cut into three individual leaves. I used two leaves per cupcake but you can skip the cutting part and just have 3 leaves per cupcake.

This is the final cake with the greeting written on a gum paste scroll.

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  http://www.make-fabulous-cakes.com/daisy-cake.html