joshalow

There's an incredible British Sugar Artist who has written 5-6 books on gumpaste flowers, Alan Dunn, and he also teaches the method of wiring alot of the petals of a flower. I took a class with him and one of the flowers we made was a Passion Flower. Wow! the number of wires we had to use for that flower- every petal and every filament was on a wire- but we used 33 gauge for a lot of it. His, Alan Dunn's roses are just incredibly realistic, and the outer row of petals are on wires. As for Ron's cake, I have to agree with bkeith and Steve with the method of doing the chocolate branch. As to whether he uses wires, he shared at a recent on-line chat that he sticks his wired flowers into coffee stirers and then sticks those into the cake, so the wires are not in the cake.

I've made a bread pudding with guava, and a cake log or "brazo gitano" with guava filling- both are delicious. Both recipes come from PR.

I've been lurking for a while, although had posted some questions in the past, but have been reading and enjoying all of the posts and wonderful information that's shared here without posting much. I just read this thread tonight. It's incredible to see how much talent there is amongst sugar artists here, some who I recognize from ICES, and other boards. I also make my own fondant- have been making it for 17 years now. At times, I think I'd rather start using the commercial fondants, just for the ease of it, but then I am so used to the flavor and texture of the fondant I make. I really enjoy working with gumpaste, making flowers, and figurines. I've started "playing" around with some blown and pulled sugar, and my dream is to take a course, sometime, with Ewald Notter. I hope you don't mind, but I figured I'd share a link to my website sharon's creative cakes