You will need:

Edibles:

Equipment:

• 15 x 15cm (6 x 6in) (double height), 20 x 12.5cm (8 x 5in)cakes
• 2.4kg white sugarpaste)
• 1g green sugarpaste
• 100g flower paste
• 50g royal icing
• yellow gel food colouring
• edible paints: brown, green
• lustre dusts: green, bronze
• petal dust: green moss
• edible glue
• water
• cornflour duster

• flexi smoother
• non-stick rolling pin, large and small
• 25cm (10in) cake drum
• smoother
• wide flat paint brushes
• dusting brushes
• palette for paints
• small palette knife
• kitchen roll
• 28, 18 gauge green floral wires
• pipe cleaners
• tweezers
• wire cutters
• bone tool
• small cup for water
• candle
• kemper tool
• small daisy plunger cutter (PME)
• foam mat
• small cel stick
• brown and green floral tape
• perspex sheet
• polystyrene block
• ribbon: green, yellow
• double sided tape
• posy picks x 3

1

Cover the cake board and cakes with the white sugar paste. Use the flexi smoothers to create sharp edges and assemble the cakes. When covering a double barrel cake use a paste that has added gum. It costs a little bit more but the paste is easier to handle and the finish is worth it! Let them dry overnight.

2

Prepare royal icing. You want it to be very stiff and a little more textured than for piping. Even add more icing sugar to get the textural effect. Using a palette knife, smear patches of texture on the top tier.

3

With a small amount of paint, use the paint palette to make two or three shades of each colour, using water to thin the paint. Using a brush per colour and stipple patches of colour on the cake.

4

Using quite a lot of water to create a watercolour effect, blend the colours in places. Allow colours to drip a little to add to the watercolour effect. Use damp kitchen roll to rub off patches of colour if needed and build up colour in other areas to achieve a variety of tones.

5

Repeat this on top of the lower tier and then load a single drip with water on the edge and allow it to run naturally down the cake. Hold clean kitchen roll where you want the drip to end. Repeat with both colours all around the cake. Leave paint to dry overnight.

6

Take a few 28 gauge wires and cut to 5cm lengths. You will need about fifty daisies, so cut this many stems.

7

With tweezers, form a small hook at one end and then bend this over to form a flat end.

8

Take a small amount of flower paste and add yellow food colouring. Roll out a thin sausage and pull off tiny 2mm balls. You can make these in small amounts to stop them drying out too fast.

9

Take one wire, with wet fingers dampen the wire below the hook. Hold just the hook over the flame of the candle. Quickly push the hook into a yellow ball, it will melt the sugar. You should see a little smoke as you bond them together.

10

Hold the ball and wire in one hand and use the kemper tool to prick the surface of the ball to make it look like a daisy centre. Repeat steps 9 and 10 for all flowers.

11

Take a small ball of flower paste, dust a non-stick board with cornflour and roll it out very thin. With the daisy plunger cut out a few flowers. Wiggle the cutter as you do this and then rub the edge of the cutter in your palm or with a finger for a clean edge. Place under the perspex to keep them from drying out.

12

On your foam mat take a flower and using your small cel stick, thin the petals with the round end. They will naturally curl if you start in the centre and move outward. Place the stick in the centre of the flower and make tiny circular movements to lift the petals.

13

Attach the stem and centre by dabbing a little edible glue in the middle of the flower and poke the stem through the petals slightly off centre (this is how the wire sits underneath.) Hold the flower petals gently between your thumb and finger to shape and secure the petals to the stem. Make a hook at the end and dry upside down.

14

Take two pipe cleaners and use the template to help form the lettering. Form the letters as you would do as if you were writing the word. Fix the places where the pipe cleaners meet by twisting them together. Feel free the fold pipe cleaners back on its self to achieve the right look. Cut off loose wire ends.

15

Cut two 7.5cm pieces of 18 gauge green wire. Bind with brown floral tape on the first leg of the ‘N’ and the last leg of the 'W’, then completely cover all the exposed pipe cleaner. Leave a piece of tape loose from the curled ends of the letters and twist this together to taper the end. Work with small pieces, smooth the tape with a bone tool to remove ridges but still keep it branch-like.

16

Either hold the letters or place the wires into a polystyrene block. Take tiny amounts of green sugarpaste. Dot edible glue on the upper edges of the letters and using a kemper tool, press and drag the paste to give a mossy effect. Let it dry a little then dust with a little moss green petal dust and green lustre. Dust the branches slightly, just to highlight areas.

17

Make a few daisies using the method above but leave out the stem, just attach a yellow centre to the petals. Place a dot of edible glue where you would like to place a flower on the moss areas and carefully place it down. Use the pointed end of the cel stick to push it in place. Repeat the above steps to make the ‘&’ symbol and ‘Forever’. Add 18 gauge wire to the long leg of the ‘&’ and the ‘F’, ‘e’ and ‘r’.

18

Take seven 18 gauge wires and tape them together with green floral tape to form a circle. Leave about 7.5cm off the ends so they overlap. You will need to make two sets of wire circles.

19

Now wrap green floral tape around the ends of the wire and leave quite a long trailing bit of tape for the end of the wire to twist into grass. You can completely cover the wires with tape if you wish. Again smooth the tape down. Bend the wires to give natural movement.

20

Take a dusting brush and a piece of kitchen roll. Pour a tiny amount of moss green dust on to the kitchen roll, load the brush and colour the tape in for a natural effect or to bend in any exposed wire. Twist the two circles together to form a grass wreath. Twist a few wires together or fix with a little floral tape.

21

Bend the supporting wires of the ‘Forever’ so they sit parallel and bind them to the grass wreath you have made with floral tape. Again use dust to blend and colour the tape in.

22

Now take three daisies and twist together the ends of the wires. Have the heads at different heights.

23

Using green floral tape, attach these flowers at different points all around the grass wreath. Add single ones to fill in spaces and keep them equally spaced apart.

24

Take a powder brush and dust green and bronze lustre dust in the corresponding coloured areas of the water coloured tier. Highlight the textural areas to lift the colours of the cake.

25

Measure and attach a green ribbon to base of the first tier using a dab of royal icing. For the cake board edge, I used a yellow ribbon first then the green to finish. Wrap double side tape all around the board and attach the ribbon to it. Then measure the green ribbon. Add tape to the back of this and fix it in place.

26

Time to assemble the cake. Use posy picks to insert the wires into the cake and for the topper, angle the picks inwards slightly. Fill with a little white sugarpaste and push them into the cake. Push the wires in by hand or ease the wires in with tweezers if this helps. Bind the daisy wreath around the back of the cake with floral tape and twist the wires together making sure the words are central.