This cake was my first experience making flowers with fondant, and also my first experience using ganache!  I started by melting the chocolate slowly over a double boiler.  Then, I covered the white layered cake with it (after crumb coating it).  Because ganache hardens fairly quickly, it’s important to work fast!

I find that semisweet chocolate makes for the tastiest ganache!  The process of layering it on and smoothing it out to form edges proved the most difficult.  This cake went in and out of the freezer many many times before I was happy with the smoothness of the ganache.

Next, I went to work on the flowers.  I realized very quickly that even if allowed to dry completely, marshmallow fondant wasn’t going to dry to a firmness that would work in order to have the petals stay in place.  I ended up going with a 50/50 mix of fondant and gum-paste, which kept the delicious marshmallow flavor, while firming up better than marshmallow fondant alone would have done.

Each petal was hand painted by me using watered down pink pearl dust, and a tiny paintbrush. 🙂  Green pearl dust was used at the base of each petal.  After painting each petal, and shaping them using a light rolling motion with a special tool, I let each one dry.  When the petals were dried, I placed a pre made stamen in the center, and gathered the petals around it, securing it all in place using floral tape wrapped tightly around the wire bases of each petal.  Ta da!

I made three stargazer lilies, which I let dry and set over night.  Meanwhile, I made the cake, covered it in white marshmallow fondant, and used a pink pearl dust to cover the Pre made super awesome Wilton fondant ribbon!  It’s a super nice little touch to add to fancy things up a bit!

After making a few little leaves, and arranging the flowers on the cake in a way that looked aesthetically pleasing, it was finally done!  I was extremely happy with how it turned out, as was the recipient! 🙂