Orchid Cake

This weekend I was at home watching the Olympics (Go USA!) and decided to use my couch time to work on sugar flowers. I tested out a new orchid and this cake sprung up around that.

The first step in “growing” flowers is to roll and cut the petal and leaf shapes which are individually attached to thin wires. After the pieces are dried (overnight/several days) they are arranged in the shape of the flower and bound with floral tape (the green stretchy-sticky stuff). The porcelain-like flower is still pure white at this point.

One the flower is assembled and fully dried, the color is applied using pigmented dusts. First the base colors are added to the center stamen of the flower (yellow for pollen).

Next I used a pale green on the throat and placed the darker dotted pattern on with a fine tipped food color marker. The main petals also got a pale pink all-over.

A warmer pink lines the edges because when you look closely at photos of orchids there is a LOT going on in terms of color variety and shading patterns. The two onthe right have been shaded while the right hand flower is still pale.
The final step was to shade with a dark hunter green that was also applied to the leaves and then coat the whole flower with a shiny petal dust that gives it a slightly moist look.

Since the flowers have a pink and green influence I baked a pistachio pound cake recipe that I have been dying to try and covered the top with the pale pink rolled buttercream that I had left from the baby onesie cookies.

This vanilla frosting was a new experiment, but it wasn’t as thick as I like when decorating. Luckily, the focus here is really the flowers, so the borders can be simple. Win some, lose some! All in all, I am happy with this tasty experiment. The finished product:

Cake Details:

• Cake: Pistachio pound cake
• Filling: Chocolate ganache
• Icing: Vanilla icing with pink raspberry rolled buttercream on the top
• Decorations: Hand-made gumpaste flowers