Just a quick note (hopefully) with a few hints on how to create a seamless join when you want to have more than one colour of fondant covering your cake, with no overlaps.

1. Start by calculating the size fondant you need to cover the top half of the cake (in my case, the blue). I wanted the blue to come halfway down the sides of the cake so my fondant needed to be 7” (the top of the cake) + 2.25” (the cake was 4.5” high) x 2 (for each side) = 11.5” diameter.

2. Use your usual method of moistening your cake so that the fondant sticks to it, but only moisten half way down the sides.

3. Roll a piece of fondant and cut a circle of the right size(ish) using your measuring bands so you know how thick it is. I cut around a 12” cake pan. Lay it on the cake making sure it’s even all the way around. Smooth down as normal.

4. No matter how acurately you cut, you’ll end up with fondant further down the cake than half way. And if you’re anything like me, it’ll be a big ragged mess. You’re now going to cut the excess fondant away with a perfectly straight line all the way around the cake. Yes you are.

5. All of my cake instructions involve hunting around your kitchen or further afield for something just exactly right, and this is no exception! You need to find something that is exactly (or near enough that you don’t care) half the height of your cake. In my case one of my measuring cups was exactly 2.25” high. Place the cup up against the side of your cake and lay something with a flat edge on top. I used a metal ruler, but a bench scraper would probably work, or even a straight metal spatula.

6. Using the straight edge as a guide, use a very sharp knife to cut through the fondant. You’ll need to use a knife with a long blade that will rest flat on the straight edge.

Use the length of the knife blade, not just the tip to cut through the fondant. If you have a turntable, you can turn it as you continue to cut and move your straight edge and support as you go.

7. You should now have a perfectly straight edge to your blue fondant!

8. Now to start on the stripes. Roll out your two colours of fondant using the measuring bands on your rolling pin. You want both colours to be exactly the same thickness. If you don’t have them, use two wooden skewers on either side of your fondant as you roll to help get a uniform thickness. Or just eyeball it!

I used the strip cutter that came with my Tappits to cut out perfectly straight strips of fondant that were all the same width. Genius! Thanks to Isabelle from The Designer Cake Company for this idea.

9. Leave the strips to dry for five minutes or so, so that they are less likely to get misshapen as you handle them. Cut lengths that are just longer than half the height of the cake – in my case 2.5” lenghts.

I put my cake in the fridge as I was cutting the strips so that the buttercream would be nice and firm to attach the strips to and not smoosh about.

10. You need to elevate your cake slightly now so that you’ll be able to cut perfectly even edges on your strips later. You can’t see the edge of my cake as it was covered with Captain America’s belt, but I had a perfect edge! Typical that it was covered!

I sat my cake on an upturned cereal bowl using squares of non-slip shelf liner to make sure it didn’t move about.

11. Decide where the front of your cake will be and add the first strip in the centre. Don’t worry that it hangs below the bottom of the cake, just make sure that it butts up against the blue fondant above.

12. Add your second colour strip to the left AND the right and continue to add them to the left AND the right so that your final strip will be at the back. If you lay strips in one direction only, your final strip will be at the front.

13. I used the back of a knife to push the strips into the place and ensure they were perfectly straight as I went along.

14. I was realistic that my final strip was not going to fit and that I would have to cut a wider or thinner strip to fill the gap. I didn’t worry about this as I knew it would be at the back of the cake. It was more important to me to have the strips at the front be perfectly even than measure the circumferance of the cake and divide it by the number of strips. Pphhhffftt. No thank you. In the event, the final strip fitted perfectly by lucky fluke!

15. Now take that very sharp knife again and, using the cake board as a guide, cut the excess length from your strips. Lay the knife flat and use the lenth of the blade to ensure a clean cut. And you’re done! Use a fondant smoother to gently press everything in place (be careful not to dislodge your strips), stand back and marvel at the fact that you pulled it off when the thought of doing it had kept you awake at night.

Let me know if you have any questions.

This is a tutorial for making sunflowers without having to shell out for cutters. I’m a total cheapskate and I was worried the cutters wouldn’t arrive in time in any case, so decided to try doing them freehand.

You will need:
- Yellow fondant or gumpaste (I use Wilton fondant because it’s cheap, it’s pliable and it dries quickly)
- Circle cutters (the size is up to you, I’ll talk more about this later)
- Rolling pin
- Exacto or sharp knife
- Yellow, orange and black petal dust or non-toxic pastel chalks
- That shell/scalloped tool thing
- Thin sponge (not pictured)
- Paint brush

1. Begin by rolling your fondant very thin. Mine was way thinner than a dime.

2. Choose a cutter that is bigger than the size you want your finished sunflower to be. For the cake, I made mine in different sizes, with the largest being 4” in diameter. For this tutorial, however, I used a 3.5” cutter. If you don’t have cutters this size, you can use anything circular as you don’t need to actually cut with it. You can use the lid from your cornstarch, for example, of anything similar. (I’m a cheapskate, remember?)

3. Now choose a cutter that is less than half the size of your first cutter. Mine was 1.5”.

4. Press your largest cutter into your rolled fondant three times (as there are three layers of petals). You don’t need to cut all the way through, you’re just making an indentation.

5. Use the smaller cutter to press VERY GENTLY in the middle of the three larger circles. If you press too hard, your petals will break off when the flower dries. All you need is a guide for cutting your petals. In the photo below I actually pressed too hard into the circle at the bottom.

6. Take your scalpel or sharp knife and, using the inner and outer circles as a guide, begin cutting your petals. Start at the inner circle and cut a curve out to, and beyond, the outer circle. Repeat on the other side to meet your first cut at the outer circle until you have one petal cut. Repeat all the way around your circle and remove the flower shape from the fondant. Pop it under a piece of plastic while you cut the rest.

Don’t worry if all your petals aren’t even – mine certainly weren’t – but do be careful not to cut them too thin otherwise they’re more likely to break off later. I tried to make mine between 1/4 and 1/2” wide.

7. Continue until all three sets of petals are cut.

8. Now put one set of petals on to your thin foam and use the scallopy shell tool thing to vein and curl your petals. (I really should find out what that tool is called.)

9. Start with the tool halfway off the end of the petal and press pretty firmly up the length of the petal into the centre. The petal should curl up slightly at the end and have a nice ridged texture. Here’s a useless photo. I have to stand so far back with my camera, I couldn’t reach the tool!

10. Repeat for all three sets of petals and then layer one on top of each other using a dab of water in the centre to secure. Try to overlap the petals so that each one falls between two petals underneath.

11. Now put the sunflower somewhere ingenious to help you keep the edges of the petals curled up. I used the lid of a Starbucks Frapuccino (did I mention cheapskate?) and then transferred into a cutter of a slightly smaller size so that just the edges of the petals were kept from drooping.

12. For the centre of the sunflower, take a ball of brown fondant – I used Satin Ice Dark Chocolate – and squash it flat. It needs to be a little larger than the diameter of the cutter you used to mark the centre of your petals.

13. Create a round indentation in the middle of the brown disc by rubbing your finger in a circular motion inside the edge. You want the very centre to be raised up, then an indentation, and then the edges to be raised up again. This part isn’t critical, but it does seem to be the shape of the real sunflower centres I looked at.

14. Using piping tips, start poking the brown disc all over. I actually used one inside another to make the process a bit quicker. Don’t worry if the fondant starts lifting up slightly – you’re looking for texture, not holes. Keep going all over the disc poking around the edges too if it starts to get misshapen. Try to retain the indentation.

Being a cheapskate – did I mention that? – I didn’t want to buy three colours of petal dust just to make a flower I’m unlikely to make again in years. I’d seen a thread on Cake Central about using non-toxic chalks and thought I’d do some more research. Even Wilton suggests using them on its website. I had a new, unopened box of pastel chalks my son never used (he’s not the arty type) so I used these in place of petal dust.

15. If you are using petal dust, brush a little black or very dark brown into the centre of the brown disc. If you are using chalks, you’ll need to create a powder first. There are a few suggestions I’ve read – grind a small piece in a pestle and mortar or rub the chalk through a sieve or tea strainer. I just scraped my chalks with my Exacto knife until I had a little pile of powder.

16. When your sunflower petals are dry, brush the length of the petals with egg yolk yellow petal dust or chalk dust. I started in the centre and brushed outwards towards the tips of the petals. I didn’t brush the underneath petals, but I guess you could do that to each layer before sticking them together. I didn’t think it was necessary.

In the photo below I have brushed just the right hand half of the flowr. It’s a subtle difference.

17. Now brush just half of each petal with orange, or orange mixed with the yellow. You don’t want it to be too dramatic – it should just be shading that emerges from under the sunflower centre once it’s attached.

18. Finally, adhere the centre to the petals. Et voila!

I’ve found the PME leaf cutters are pretty much the right shape for sunflowers, so I added a bunch of them to the cake, brushed with a little green petal dust.

Let me know if you have any questions, I’ll be pleased to help!