Sugar Flowers, Who Needs Them?

JUST KIDDING!!!! I love to make sugar flowers, but I use silk flowers for my demo cakes. I hate it when the sugar flowers break when we are traveling. This bright green cake was decorated using an icing sheet. I airbrushed the icing sheet black before cutting it out. Here is a tip for airbrushing black. I first used black airbrush color and found the color was not very strong, it took several coats of color to get a good, solid black. All of this color weakened the icing sheet and it took a very long time to dry enough to use. I then used the black color I use to re-fill my color cartridges for my edible printer. It is also a food color, but the color is very intense. I applied two light coats to the icing sheet and the results were perfect! I let the icing sheet dry for a few minutes and it was ready for me to cut the designs. When using Photo Frost icing sheets for the tiny, intricate cuts you need to remove it from the backing paper. Apply shortening to a piece of card stock paper and then attach the icing sheet to the cardstock. If you are using the Silhouette to cut out your designs you will need to trim about 1/2" from each side of the cardstock. Just score through the icing sheet with an x-acto knife, not cut the cardstock. You feed the cardstock into the machine and cut out your designs. No need to apply it to a carrier sheet. There is enough shortening on the back of the design so it will easily stick to a fondant covered cake.


If you want to put the designs on a buttercream cake, you may want to chill the cake so the icing will firm up. I put my designs on the side of the cake and use a fondant smoother to apply a bit of pressure to the design. This will help the design stick to the cake and the side of the cake will stay smooth.