These wedding cakes all featured gumpaste flowers as a focal point. Sugar flowers are the classic for a lot of wedding cakes, and gumpaste is the most common way to make flowers that can look very realistic.
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A single large gumpaste focal flower.
This wedding cake is a good example of how a cake doesn’t have to be huge to be pretty.
For this intimate reception the bride wanted something simple, so I did a traditional dot pattern on the tiers and kept the decoration to a minimum.
The gumpaste gardenia was the focal point and the leaves were the only color on the cake.
Minimalist pink gumpaste peonies.
This bride wanted a plain white cake with very minimal decorations.
She chose gumpaste flowers for the top and the sides, and asked that the flowers be very, very pale pink.
I dusted them with pale pink dust and made the petals darker in the centers than on the outer edges.
I used white stamens in the centers so that there wouldn’t be any yellow in them.
The bases had no border, they were just iced smooth with buttercream when I set the cake up on site.
Since the cake was set up in the center of the room, I did one flower on each side so that when people walked around it there wouldn’t be one decorated side and one that had nothing on it.
That’s something that you should be aware of…If a cake will be up against a wall that’s one thing, but if it will be “theater in the round” you’ll need to make sure there’s visual interest on all sides of it.
For more pink wedding cakes, click here.
To see wedding cakes with gumpaste hydrangeas, click here. And for some cakes with gumpaste orchids, click here.
Gumpaste hydrangeas and peonies.
This wedding cake had fondant/candy clay ruffles on the bottom tier and piped dots on the middle and top tiers.
Gumpaste flowers on the middle tier in the bride’s colors completed the design.
Large gumpaste gerbera daisies.
For the display cake with gumpaste daisies, I did the icing using rough-textured royal icing with some magenta and light mauve petal dust dragged through the icing to create the color on the tiers.
I had dusted the flowers with those colors so that kept it monochromatic, but then I thought that it was too monochromatic…
So I added some green and blue stenciled pieces to the tiers to add contrasting colors to the design.
I used a stencil that had a damask leaf pattern and did portions of it here and there, overlapping the colors in places.
For an article about stenciling onto buttercream, click here.
For me, it really brought the design together and gave it some visual interest, as opposed to leaving it so monochrome.
To see some wedding cakes that have fresh flowers on them, click here.
Gumpste magnolias.
This one was a royal icing piped lace pattern, and I had to try out a few combinations of flowers before I got to one I liked.
These are gumpaste magnolias, and I don’t think this particular cake needed anything else.
If it had been piped in white you’d be able to add more flowers to it, but the blue makes it difficult to put too much on it without looking too busy.
A large gumpaste expanded rose.
This cake had a large exploded/expanded rose on it, with an ombre tint to the petals.
I liked this one since it was a little different from the usual one-color flower.
To do this, start with the center since it will be the darkest color, then go to the outside petals and do the lightest ones first.
Work your way in to match the dark color in the middle.
If you start at the middle and go out you might not end up with enough of the lightest petals unless you plan really carefully.
This way you can always make some darker if needed, but you’ll definitely end up with enough of the lighter ones.
The expanded flower cakes are pretty easy to make as far as assembling them, and you can add color to the tips of the petals if you want to put an accent color or a metallic color on them.
These petals had a silver edge, so when the flower was assembled they would be silver-tipped.
This orange expanded flower also had a bling trim as the border on the cake tiers.
Purple gumpaste calla lilies.
This cake had dark purple calla lilies on it.
The purple color was made with Crystal Colors petal dusts, since they always give a really good, deep color and good coverage.
A large gumpaste gardenia.
This was another design that had a single large gumpaste flower as a focal flower, with rustic buttercream icing.
Gumpate roses and hydrangeas.
This pretty wedding cake with gumpaste flowers had white sugar roses and grey gumpaste hydrangeas.
The cake tiers had piped dots on them in a Swiss Dot style.
Large gumpaste roses.
This was an order for extra large gumpaste roses that I made for a cake.
I put them on these dummy tiers to show how they would be sized, but the effect of having the big roses on a wedding cake would be a dramatic look, even if the tiers were completely plain.
Three large gumpate roses.
This was one of my favorite “simple” cakes because of the simplicity. The icing was plain iced buttercream with no piping, and the design came from the gumpaste roses.
The entire drama of this design comes from the gumpaste flowers, and it would also be really pretty in a solid color or an ombre color arrangement like the photo of the large pink roses in the photo above.
Jewel-tone gumpaste callas.
This wedding cake had square tiers and gumpaste flowers that included blue orchids and purple calla lilies.
The tiers were iced in buttercream, and the bands around the base were made from edible chocolate clay.
Gumpaste peonies and hydrangeas.
This cake was covered in piped buttercream in a loopy texture, and it had pink and white gumpaste flowers on the bottom tier in a single grouping.
Purple gumpaste peonies.
This cake had irregular fondant strips covering the tiers, and was then brushed with luster dust to give it a pearly shine.
The gumpaste flowers were purple peonies that were brushed with purple petal dust. When you color gumpaste with purple food coloring the color can fade and turn blue, but the purple dust preserves the color without fading.
Gumpaste peonies and callas.
This was one of my favorite gumpaste flower arrangements because of the color of the flowers.
To get the deep magenta color, I used Crystal Colors petal dust and dusted the flowers with multiple shades of magenta and purple.
The buttercream piping on the cake was done in an ombre design with the deeper shade of cream at the bottom and fading to white at the top.
Gumpaste peonies and lilacs.
This wedding cake had rustic icing and pink gumpaste peonies with white lilacs as a filler flower.
I have a tutorial on how to make the gumpaste peonies available, click here to see that: Gumpaste Peony Tutorial
Gumpaste peonies.
This wedding cake has fondant ruffles and gumpaste peonies.
Gumpaste roses and orchids.
This one had red gumpaste roses and fondant draping on the tiers.
For more wedding cakes with ruffles, click here.
Gumpaste rose cascade.
This small wedding cake had a classic cascade of red gumpaste roses on it.
This is a pretty and traditional style that works well for a classic wedding reception.
Gumpaste peonies, sweet peas, and lilacs.
This wedding cake had a lot of gumpaste flowers on it in shades of white, pink, and purple.
