Vining flowers and leaves on a wedding cake can be a very pretty effect, but you have to take the type of icing on the cake into account, plus the length of the vines and how heavy they’re going to be on the cake tiers. This is how I planned for that to make elegant vining leaves and flowers to use on custom wedding cakes.
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How to plan the vines.
I did a cake that had vines of gumpaste flowers on the bottom two tiers. They were combinations of orchids and freesia-type flowers on a stem, so the flowers were wired and they had some weight to them, plus they had pokey areas that needed to be arranged carefully on the cake tiers.
To get this effect I used to dummies to make the vines.
I put a skewer in the center and attached a wire to the skewer so that I could see how long the vines had to be to make it from the top to the bottom of the tiers.
I hooked the flowers onto the wires and did enough to cover the whole cake the way that I wanted it.
I then removed the vines from the dummies, and pinched the stems with pliers to flatten out the wrapped flower stems.
After that I wrapped the stems with floral tape to make sure that nothing would move. I made additional individual flowers and leaves on wires to use as filler when I set the cake up in case I needed them. You might want to make an extra vine to make sure you have enough to fill in the space, or to use if something breaks and you need a replacement.
Store the vines in a flat container with a lid that you can use to transport them safely.
Set the cake up with the vines.
When I set up the cake at the reception site I put a skewer in the center, hung the vines on it, then put a flower on top of that to cover it up. This took a good bit of time because the cake was covered in buttercream, and I had to make sure that I wasn’t destroying the icing as I put the vines on it.
The best way to do this is to start at the top of the tier while you’re holding the vine out and away from the cake. Place the end of the vine where you want it at the top of the cake, then carefully place the vine on the cake starting from the top to the bottom.
If you’ve planned the vines out on a dummy cake, you won’t end up with empty spaces because everything will be designed to fit the space ahead of time.
I filled in any empty spaces with more gumpaste, and there you have it!
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