Poppies

No cake, whose purpose is to honor those that have served their country, would be complete without Poppies.  The original vision for the cake was to have a field of poppies on the top of the cake, in which would be standing a bride and groom.  Well.....time caught up with me and there was no time to get the bride and groom done (I have the grooms legs and feet, but that's all, lol!). 

So, I purchased some Poppy cutters at a cake show, in anticipation of using them for this cake.  However...when I looked at them, I realized the flowers would have been half the size of the bride and groom....well, that won't work!

The only cutter I had that would even come close to producing a poppy was my hydrangea cutter.  The petals aren't as wide as they should be, and they really didn't end up looking like poppies - but I did my best with what I had.

I did not make them on wires, since they were going to be sitting on the top of the cake.  I used egg crate foam to dry them in, so they would keep their cupped shape.  I cut out the flower with the hydrangea cutter, softened and frilled the edges with my ball tool, then cupped them and set them in the foam to dry. 

Once they were dry, I dusted them with red petal dust, called Poppy Red.  They didn't look that red for me, but what do I know about the color of poppies, lol.  To try to make them look more authentic, I used some black royal icing and piped a fairly large dot in the center of each flower, then inserted 5 to 6 black stamens into each. 

Here they are all done:

Since I had no bride and groom for the top of the cake, I had no idea what to do.  In a near-panic, I called my best friend JEM, almost freaking out.  Well, she did some looking online about poppies, etc.... and ended up looking up the poem Flander's Field.  Somewhere in the information, it mentioned a wreath of poppies, so that's what I went with and decided to make a wreath of poppies on the top of the cake.  I had some little leaves that I thought would look good and make a nice looking wreath.

Here is the wreath I ended up with:

I loved it, as did everyone else.  The judges, however......not so much.  They didn't like that it didn't go with the color scheme of the rest of the cake.  Oh well, I like it, and I explained the purpose of it on the Judges Sheet that accompanied the cake.

~Chelle