Edible Rolled Flower Tutorial

A few years ago I made the cake for the teacher appreciation luncheon.  They wouldn't cut it!  The teachers thought it was too pretty to cut so they raffled it off with the other prizes.  Needless to say I was flattered but I made it to be eaten!

Now it is pretty much known that I will make the cake every year.  I try to do something that goes with the theme.  This years theme was "Teachers plant the seeds of knowledge" which meant I had to do something with flowers!

"Teachers plant the seeds of Knowledge"
Triple Chocolate Fudge, Golden Pineapple and Vanilla Cloud Cakes
Garden markers were labeled with the type of cake, the theme and other thank yous to our wonderful teachers

I love to decorate cakes but my wrist problems make it hard to pipe everything so I have learned to improvise sometime with candies in some way.  Here is how I make flowers while my cakes are baking. It's a huge time saver to make up lots of flowers before the cake has even cooled and been iced!

Supplies: jelly beans, Laffy Taffy, Fruit by the Foot, rolling pin, crinkle cutter or knife, cutting board

1.  Roll out Laffy Taffy with a rolling pin.  It helps to mush it into your hand before, warm it up a little bit, making it easier to roll out.  Sorry about using a yellow cutting board and yellow Laffy Taffy!  When I took the picture O-man looked at it and said "oh, you made it disappear!"

2.  Cut strips with a knife or crinkle cutter, I switched to a white plate!  I cut about 3 strips out of each Laffy Taffy.

3.  Begin wrapping the strips of Laffy Taffy around a jelly bean (these ones were Nerd's Jelly Beans so they were bumpy - clearance!).  Put one flat layer all the way around the jelly bean.

3a.  Do some without the jelly bean to make a different type of flower:

4.  Continue wrapping the strips of taffy folding and twisting it back and forth, much like the rolled fabric flowers that are very popular now.   The cool thing is it sticks to itself, no glue needed like the fabric version!

5.  Make them as large as you like, mix and match the colors.  Fruit by the foot works awesome too and doesn't need to be rolled out.  Add spiced gummy leaves as petals (I cut these into three because the ones I had were too thick for my flowers).

Since this was a garden theme, I used dark chocolate icing and sprinkled crushed chocolate graham crackers around the edges as dirt.

I heard one of the first teachers there say it was too pretty to cut.  I told them if they didn't cut it and enjoy it I would bring them a piece to their class room, make them eat it in front of the kids and then they would have to deal with the kids whine about not getting any cake!  Mean, but effective.

Teachers rock and should be appreciated more than one week a year.

PS - I'll be linking up to many of these parties this week, check them out!