Daisies and Bees

 This cake was made for my niece for her second birthday (she was the one who received the princess cake for her first birthday).  The idea came from Monis Torten.  This was a gluten free vanilla cake filled and covered in chocolate buttercream. 

I made 7 flowers ahead of time using a set of daisy cookie cutters.  I used 3 layers of orange gumpaste and a large daisy cutter for the outside.  I used a smaller cutter with yellow gumpaste for the center.  I cut each yellow flower into two, then cut each petal into two and folded it on itself.  I then stacked them in a circle around a brown center.  The center was simply a flattened circle that had been pushed against a a sifter for a cris-cross appearance.  I then brushed them with a bit of luster dust to make it look like a bit of pollen.  I used another small daisy cutter with green to make the sepal (leaves under the flower)  which was then wrapped around a small ball to make it look like it had a receptical.  The flowers were dried in foil cups.  Each flower took me about 15 minutes to make.

 The bees, too, were made ahead of time.  I used a ball of yellow fondant for the body and used my extruder to make thin lines of black gumpaste which I glued on - may have been easier to pipe royal icing on them.  I did use royal icing for the eyes and stingers.  The wings were made by making a tear drop of white fondant and flattening it a bit.  Some bees were made 3-dimensional and placed on the wires to dry (a little royal icing held them in place) while others were 2-dimensional for the side of the cake.  It took me about 90 minutes to make all of the bees.

 After filling and crumb coating the cake, I covered it in a very pale yellow fondant.  I used some of the leftover to create a hive in the center to stick the wires into.  While it was food safe wire, purchased in the cake section at Michaels, I didn't want any cake to pick up a metallic flavor.  So I didn't want any of the wires to stick into the cake, so the hive served as a place for the wires to be held into place.

 I used a bit of royal icing to hold the flowers and bees onto the cake.  I then rolled out some green fondant in order to cut out some stems and leaves.  I used a little white royal icing to make some bee tracks across the cake, including one in the shape of the number "2".  It was a second birthday after all.  I finished it with round balls as a border.