Whimsy 21st Birthday Cake

About a month ago I was requested to make a cake for my friend's niece who is celebrating her 21st birthday.  I was given a picture of a cake to follow. The cake in picture is not the usual buttercream cakes that I used to make.  This cake is much bigger, covered in fondant and decorated with orchid flowers. 

I must admit that I felt intimidated at thought of making fondant flowers.  My past experiences with fondant have not been a pleasant one.  My previous fondant flowers took ages to dry and when it started raining, they went limpy again.  So this time I decided to cover the cake with fondant but use gum paste instead for the flowers.  However,  I had not previous experience with gum paste.  So I SOS my Wilton instructor, Jo for help.  She was very helpful and even provided me with the gum paste recipe which can dry within a day.

Armoured with the lessons I learnt from Wilton and Jo, I set out to make the cake.  I started by making the flower buds and left them to dry for a couple of days.



Once the flower buds have completely dry out, I painted them and set to make the petals.

Then followed by the rest of decorative items.






These 'stars' took me 3 attempts to make before I got them right.  The first 2 attempts failed miserably.



Here you see me putting final touches to the cake.   

Phew...finally the cake is done.

This cake weigh more than 6kg and I had to bring my muscle man, hubby along when delivering the cake. 

This was the picture given to me.

Photo courtesy of Sydney.