Gadgets: Jubilee Cake Decorations

I admit I got completely caught up in the Jubilee hype.  I have bunting at home and in my office.  I convinced my husband to buy a lifesize cardboard cut out of the Queen for his office window which as you can see looks amazing!

And of course I have purchased more Jubilee cupcakes liners, decorations and sprinkles than I will use for this Jubilee at least.  I even have some things left over from the Royal Wedding.  I am sure I will find ways to use them up even if I have to invent some new events. I had several things planned over the Jubilee weekend and one event was to celebrate my in laws 60th wedding anniversary.  I made cakes for our tea party which I will blog about later but this blog is going to focus on making the decorations for the cakes.  I made three cakes; a Victoria sponge, a chocolate fudge cake and a carrot cake (its good to have a choice, right?) but in the spirit of all things red, white and blue the decorations aren't going to be totally traditional.

I decided to have a separate theme for each cake based on my equipment and skills.  I had purchased the Renshaw great British icing pack from Lakeland  (love that store) which gave me lots of red, white and blue sugarpaste to use for the decorations.  I got my cutters and started to put together some ideas.  I ended up with more ideas than cakes to decorate.  I decided upon crowns, roses and small flowers because I like using the plunger cutters.  

Here are my assembled gadgets:

I sat down in front of the televison and set to work.  I started by adding a pinch of  gum tragacanth to the sugar paste to make it firmer and easier to work with. The rolling pin I use and the board are both non-stick. I had some corn flour nearby in case the paste got a bit sticky but you need to be careful as it can leave a white film on the decorations.  I started with the navy blue paste to make my small flowers.  I decided to use some white ball sprinkles that I bought in Williams Sonoma in New York as the middle of the flower and I used a tiny bit of edible glue to stick it in place - royal icing would work just as well. 

I think this looks like my dog nephew Tigger with a close up of the flowers I made.  I used the little white flower cutter that came as part of a 3 part set.

Making the crowns was a bit more complicated as I thought they should have the full red, white and blue effect on each one. I used the red sugarpaste as a contrast on the blue crowns and used the same white sprinkles as jewels.  I lightly dusted the red sugarpaste with some edible red glitter dust to add some sparkle to the crowns.  

 Here you can see my lovely crowns sliding down the cake......fortunately they stayed in place when it was ready to serve!

Another sliding crown.........

I realised I needed a centrepiece to go with the small crowns so I came up with the idea of a Union Jack crown.  I cut out a big blue crown with a cookie cutter I had and made strips of white and red to make the flag.  I was very pleased with the end result!

Add it didn't slip or slide off the cake!

The third decoration was some simple sugarpaste roses that you make by cutting out seven circles that you then gently flatten out to form into roses.  Considering the cutter I used was the same the roses are all slightly different sizes. Could be I lost concentration as I was watching TV at the same time.  

I put some of the red glitter on the red roses - I do tend to 'over' glitter because I like the sparkle.

 
Had to do one rose with all three colours.

Once I put the roses on the cake it needed something to make the decorations look complete so I had to quickly twist together the sugar paste into a number 60.

 Full pictures of the cakes will follow!