How to make a Sugarpaste or Fondant Rose

Wired sugar flowers are really tricky to make and I've only done it once before, so when the tutor of my cake decorating class said we were going to make them I was really pleased. I was also a little surprised as the class is aimed at all levels and has several complete beginners but I thought it was good that we were going to do something that would stretch abilities and teach me something useful.

However, the flower we ended up making wasn't what I call wired at all - it had a wire as a stem but the petals were not individually wired. After the tutor had demonstrated, I asked her if we were going to make wired flowers as well - and she said this was a wired flower. Obviously we have different understandings of the term!
Even so this is a very pretty flower and you can make it a lot faster than a fully wired flower and you don't need much specialist equipment - we used a template rather than a cutter. There are a few things you need however, which you can buy from Amazon or any good cake decorating shop:

Culpitt 18 Gauge Dark Green Florist Wires - Sugar Flowers

8pc Sugarcraft Cake Modelling Tool Set- you need the balling tool

PME sugarcraft Foam pad

Renshaw Flower and Modelling Paste 250 g

You can make your flower any colour; I used Sugarflair Spectral Concentrated Paste Colour - Christmas Red

And if you want to make leaves:

Sugarflair Sugarpaste Colour Paste Holly Green

3Pcs Veined Rose Leaf Fondant Cake Cutter Plunger--White

Moss Green Stem Tape 90 feet x 13mm. Stem - Tex. For Corsages, Bouquets, Flowers, Arrangements and Crafts.

Optional: Wilton Gum Paste Flowers Drying Rack

That does look quite a long list but it's nothing compared to what you need to make proper wired flowers!

To begin colour about 70g of sugarpaste in your chosen colour. Make a ball and roll in your palms to form a cone. Bend the end of the wire into a little hook and insert into the cone; this is your central bud.

Roll out some more of the flower paste so it is very thin. You can use a large flower cutter (rather than individual petals) or draw a shape yourself and use it as a template; we used a card template our tutor had made and then laminated. Cut out around it.

Place the petals on a foam pad and rub around the edges with a balling tool, with the tool half on the flower and half on the pad. This will make the edge of the flower curl up.

Stick the wire through the centre of the petals and bring it up so it sits underneath the bud. Taking one petal, wrap it very tightly around the bud, then take a petal from the opposite side and do the same thing, overlapping it. Repeat and start to bend the tops of the petals out slightly until they are all wrapped around.

Repeat the previous steps with another piece of flowerpaste and another set of petals.

And finally repeat with a third layer, bending the final petals out more.

The flowerpaste will start to harden quite quickly; be careful where you place the rose so it doesn't sit on one side. Ideally hang it from a drying rack or stick the wire through a hole in a colander -have a look around the house and see what you can find!

To make the leaves, colour a small piece of flowerpaste green and use the plunger cutter. These need to be fairly thick so you can get a wire through the middle. Cut a shorter piece of wire and carefully insert it into the centre of the leaf and bend the leaf backwards. Bind the wire to the main one holding the flower up using florist tape; repeat if you want to have two leaves.

This would be very pretty on top of a cake and it doesn't take too long if you need to make a few.

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Mexico Review part 4 - Zoetry Paraiso de la Bonita hotel

Zoetry Paraiso de la Bonita, Riviera Maya, Mexico

 

This hotel is one of the Leading Hotels of the World group which says it all. We transferred here from a hotel we really didn't like and it was bliss. With parrots.

 

 

and from the moment we walked in the door, it was paradise. Polite and attentive staff, everything from the pool chairs to the lobby looks good quality and best of all they have resident parrots! There are a couple of pairs of parrots which don’t mind you coming up to them to take a photo, then a single female who rather likes the men. We saw a guy giving her high-fives and my boyfriend did the same and she took hold of his hand, walked up his arm and sat on his shoulder, which was brilliant…until we realised she didn’t want to get off and we had to ask a member of staff for help! My boyfriend wasn’t thrilled but I got some great photos. After a couple of days I also got her to stand on my arm which was good because apparently she doesn’t like women!

 

 

We had the most basic room the hotel offered and it was still amazing. It was overlooking the beach, and our balcony was huge, it had two big day beds which were so comfortable we could just lay there and look at the sea and sunbathe. There was a bottle of champagne and also a bottle of tequila waiting in our room, or rather in the living room as we had a separate  bedroom (and the marble bathroom was amazing). We were only here three nights and I didn’t want to leave!

 

I didn’t go in the sea here as there was a lot of seaweed, more than I’ve ever seen in fact, but the pool is great so I didn’t mind. In the morning I saw towels on every sun bed which made me think they were all taken so I would have to sit on the sandy beach but when I asked a passing member of staff where I got the towels from, he explained that they are all put out on the loungers already, and the ones that were still rolled up weren’t taken yet. So I got myself a lounger, not under an umbrella, but shortly after another member of staff came over and asked if I would like an umbrella and went to get me one. They are also very good at bringing drinks which you are allowed to drink in the pool in plastic glasses. And their cocktails are to die for!

 

They offer two free excursions, a sunset boat trip and a boat ride to the next village for a shopping trip. There are only 8 places on each which run once a day so you have to sign up as soon as you arrive. As we were only staying for three days they were fully booked but said often people don’t turn up so if we came and waited we might be lucky. In fact we were able to go on the shopping trip, but I’m not sure to what extent it was worth it. The boat ride took 40 minutes, and it was quite fun at first – we were all allowed to have a go at steering and have our photo taken – but by the end I felt quite seasick so we got a taxi back! The village is really small with just a few shops around a main square. We had been told we only had an hour before we had to come back to the boat which I thought wouldn’t be enough time but actually it was plenty as all we did was buy a couple of postcards and some tequila from a little supermarket (which was a lot cheaper than airport prices). We decided to get a taxi back to the hotel because I didn’t think I could face the boat again!

 

 

On our first day we had lunch at the Kaax Grill restaurant and I had grouper ceviche to start which was amazing, and then prawn tacos for my main course, which was quite a small portion though the prawns themselves (three) were huge. They were in a beer batter though and the beer taste was a bit strong for my liking.

My boyfriend had a grilled chicken sandwich with chips which he really enjoyed. I asked the waiter if I could have a non-alcoholic cocktail and he made a few suggestions and made me something amazing with mango. At the beginning of our meal the waiter had said he would bring nachos and salsa and to watch out for the salsa as it was hot and by the end of the meal we realised he had forgotten to bring it!

 

  

We went to the grill restaurant for dinner, and sat outside; we were seated on the end of a long table – even though there was at least one table for two available – then when a group of four came in later they were seated next to us on the same table. The waiter never came to take our drinks order so we just had water. We both ordered the steak; we had had some very poor quality fatty steaks on our travels around the Yucatan peninsula and assumed this would be much better but in fact again it was very fatty and we couldn’t eat a lot of it. It came with some roasted peppers and onion and only one potato wedge each so the whole thing really wasn’t very filling.

We were still hungry and quite disappointed so decided to go back to our room and order room service, since it’s all inclusive and we didn’t have to pay! We both wanted pizza and I wasn’t sure whether to get one each or share but ordered one each, and I’m glad I did as they were tiny! We also had the chocolate cake to follow (we really hadn’t eaten much in the restaurant) which was a surprisingly big slice and delicious.

 

 

For breakfast in the Kaax restaurant there is both  a menu and a buffet. On the first day we didn’t realise there was a menu so helped ourselves from the buffet; there was a good selection with some really nice eggs in a slightly spicy chipotle sauce, lots of bread and pastries, fruit etc.

 

 

On the second day we sat down and had waiter service; the eggs were so good yesterday I chose them from the menu and this time they came on a muffin like eggs benedict, with the same delicious sauce over the top.

 

  

On our third and final day for breakfast I chose a salmon bagel.

The maids leave a newsletter every day with all sorts of information including a schedule of activities like yoga classes and the boat trips and so on. The first activity I decided to do was ‘cigar rolling’ and I watched a guy set up his stand by the pool; myself and another guest went over to watch. The other guest liked to smoke cigars (I don’t even smoke cigarettes) so the man quickly realised I wasn’t going to buy anything so he spent time explaining to the other guest about the different kinds of cigars he had and the prices. He did show us some tobacco leaves but didn’t do any rolling and just seemed to be there to sell cigars so in the end I went away. The next day however I did a cocktail masterclass which was far better – I’m going to review that separately and share the recipe I learnt.

 

The hotel does afternoon tea between 5 and 6 with a selection of teas and little cakes which was lovely (and I couldn’t get over the fact that we didn’t have to pay for anything, as I’ve never done all inclusive before!).

 

  

We were given $200 of vouchers to spend in the hotel when we arrived but didn’t use them at all – you can use $10 a time on a bottle of wine in a restaurant (but since the house wine is free I was happy with that) and only $40 a time in the spa and given most of the spa treatments cost about $200 I wasn’t exactly tempted!

 

We had lunch in the pool bar on our second day; the menu there is mainly pizzas and a burger. We both decided to have the burger and were asked how we wanted it cooked and if we wanted cheese with it; it then came with a single potato wedge like our meal last night. I don’t know why they think a portion of potato wedges consists of one, or maybe it was more of a garnish? The burger was extremely good but by now my boyfriend was really craving chips!

 

 

The second time we had lunch here, I ordered for both of us as my boyfriend had gone to get something from the room, and I asked if he could have chips with his burger. The waiter said it was the other restaurant that did the chips so I said not to worry but then when the food came he had managed to get a portion of chips so my boyfriend was very happy. Unfortunately his food arrived ten minutes after I had actually finished eating mine even though I ordered both at the same time! I had a pizza; they are pretty small but tasty, and I wanted the seafood pizza without octopus (yuk) and was a bit worried they would misunderstand but it was just what I wanted.

 

 

On our second night we had dinner at the posh restaurant; they do have a dress code but as long as you are smart that’s OK (eg my boyfriend had a polo shirt with a collar and was worried he needed an actual shirt but it was fine). It was a very nice restaurant with good service and a guy playing the violin inside. In fact another day there was a harpist at breakfast!

 

 

I had a starter that was described as “watermelon salad, celery cloud, goat’s cheese ice cream”. It was a round disc of watermelon, a sort of celery mousse (which I didn’t like at all) and the goat’s cheese ice cream was interesting because it was so unusual. For my main course I had duck breast with foie gras risotto and shallot confit which was delicious. My boyfriend had steak again, as he’s very fussy and there wasn’t anything else on the menu he liked. It was a thick piece of steak with no fat (finally after two weeks, a decent, edible steak!) though he said it still wasn’t the same quality as a good steak restaurant in London. And of course it still didn’t come with chips. For dessert we both had a chocolate sabayon with salted caramel sauce that was amazing.

 

 

The bar in the library is great; I had a chocolate martini one evening and asked the barman (I think his name was Tico) who the people in the photos were and he went round (there was nobody else in the bar) pointing out each person, some were the family of the hotel owner and there were various celebrities who had stayed there. Another day one of the activities listed was cocktail making in the library; after the cigar rolling I didn’t have high hopes and thought it would be a demonstration at best. There were 8 of us standing along the bar and perhaps because I had been speaking to him last night, Tico chose me to come behind the bar and I made quite an elaborate cocktail (with his help) for 8 people!

It was really fun and we each got a turn – a few people were in the same group and after one of them had made a cocktail the rest of them drifted off but I ended up drinking four cocktails over an hour and a half plus doing a shot of tequila – Tico had been a tequila taster before working here! It was brilliant fun and I really enjoyed chatting to the other guests including a lovely young couple on their honeymoon. If you get the chance to do the cocktail making then make sure you do, and say hi to Tico in the library bar!

 

 

On our last night we had dinner at Kaax which had a different menu to lunchtime but as my boyfriend is so fussy there wasn’t much he liked again so he had another steak, which once again was thin and fatty and was served with some lumpy mashed potato. I was confused by something on the menu called ‘rock Cornish’ which was chicken – apparently Americans would be familiar with that term but I’d never heard it before. One item on the menu was ‘mixed grill’ and the waiter said I could choose any two of the other dishes on the menu so I had the chicken and the prime rib. The chicken was quite nice but three quarters of my steak was absolutely inedible, it was nothing but fat. In the UK a restaurant just wouldn’t serve you a steak like that in the first place.

 

Overall though we had an amazing time at this hotel – I keep wishing I was back on our balcony overlooking the sea with a glass of champagne in my hand. The staff were wonderful and the parrots a real highlight too!

 

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Review: Reef Playacar hotel, Mexico

 

The Reef Playacar,  Playa del Carmen, Mexico

  

After an exhausting but very interesting tour with Kuoni around Mayan sites in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, we were ready for 5 days of luxury in our all-inclusive hotel at the end. Unfortunately, that isn’t what we got – at first anyway!

 

 

At reception on arrival we were told that drinks were not replaced in the fridge in the room, we did not have wifi and we did not have access to every bar and restaurant without paying an extra charge, which was disappointing as we hadn't realised there were different levels of all inclusive.

 

We were told that for an extra $18 (US) a day we could stay in the same standard room but have wifi, soft drinks in the room and access to the other bars and restaurants, or for an extra $25 each a day we could have all that plus move to a premium room near the pool. We decided to go away and think about it. As we got to our room, we saw a very drunk young man being ‘helped’ back to his room by security which made our hearts sink. I know all inclusive means plenty of alcohol but as this was a Kuoni-recommended hotel, we were expecting something quite exclusive and high-end, probably full of older couples (much like our tour group) – not American frat boys.

 

breakfast buffet

 

We took our suitcases to our room and up two flights of stairs – there were no porters to help – and I was a bit disappointed at the quality of the room, average at best – I had been expecting something like the Dreams resort at Tulum where we had spent our first night before the tour.

 

We went to have a look at the pool – there were two, one with a swim-up bar, and the other with a net for ball games. It’s worth knowing that you don’t need to bring a towel which I hadn’t realised – you are given a plastic card which you exchange for a towel and at the end of your stay if you haven’t got your plastic card (which you receive back when you return the towel) you are charged, which seems a pretty good system. You do need to put a towel on a sunlounger before breakfast though if you want to be sure to get one around the pool.

 

The similar cards that you are given for access to your room on the other hand were not so good- every time we went out and came back to our room, one or sometimes both of the cards had stopped working and we had to go back to reception to get them reset!

 

 

Unfortunately the pool with the bar was quite rowdy (it was about 5pm so I imagine people had been drinking all day) and there were several people smoking – despite the ‘no smoking’ signs. I had had enough and went to the reception to complain about the smoking. When I complained to the hotel concierge Christian about the smoking, he shrugged and said “I can’t tell them what to do, it’s not a kindergarten.” I was amazed he had said that and explained it would spoil my holiday as I did not want to swim in the pool with people smoking cigarettes in the pool and pointed out I had paid a lot of money for this holiday. Christian said: “they have also paid a lot of money and will be upset if we tell them to stop.” He didn’t seem to care at all.

 

I pointed out these guests were breaking the hotel’s own rules, which are clearly shown on no-smoking signs around the resort. Christian admitted that if he did tell the smokers to stop, they would only start again when he left the pool area. Eventually he called over his manager and explained, who said that security would go to the pool and tell the smokers to stop, but she echoed Christian’s comments saying they would only start again five minutes later.

lunch

 

On the way back to my room I spotted an abandoned shopping trolley in the undergrowth which was still there the next day – no doubt from someone’s night out in town!

 

The Reef has six ‘restaurants and eateries’ though one of these is a very basic ice cream bar. I’d read it was only open between 4 and 6pm so went at 4 expecting a queue but there was nobody else there; later a couple of kids turned up. There was a fairly limited choice of ice cream and it really wasn’t anything special.

 

snack bar

 

There is a deli snack bar by the pool, which serves burgers, hot dogs, pizza and chips. We had a burger and chips for lunch on our second day which was fine – there’s also a self-service machine where you can get ice cream at any time but it was dreadful – chocolate flavour but tasted very watery and as it melted it looked more like water than ice cream running down the side of the cone.

 

ice cream machine

 

Cenote is an outdoor café serving tea, coffee and finger sandwiches, but I didn’t actually see this café in the two days that we were there. Looking back I do remember seeing a seating area that must have been the café but I didn’t realise it served food.

buffet restaurant

 

So as far as dinner was concerned we had a choice of Chula Vista – the main buffet restaurant which overlooks the pool – Botticelli, an Italian restaurant with a dress code of no sandals, shorts or sleeveless tops; Terraza Grill, a ‘gourmet restaurant’ which is limited to people with premium rooms but if you have a standard room you can eat there anyway with a $6 per person surcharge; it has the same dress code.

 

We went to the buffet to have a look but by this point my boyfriend had decided the hotel was far too downmarket for what he was expecting and said he would prefer one of the ‘proper’ restaurants. We had made sure we adhered to the dress code and went to Botticelli, the Italian place – only to find that nobody else in there had bothered with the dress code and the staff didn’t seem to mind.

 

tuna steak

 

I was surprised to see that even though the place is supposed to be all-inclusive, there was a $20 surcharge if you wanted to order the steak! So instead my boyfriend had a chicken breast stuffed with ham and cheese, which he said was quite nice, but it was supposed to come with rice and instead came with mashed potatoes which he said tasted like they were instant. I had tuna steak, which arrived medium as I had requested, and it was pretty good. When you order the house wine there’s no pouring a little to let you taste it first, you just get what you’re given. They are very generous with the refills though.

cannoli

 

 

For dessert my boyfriend ordere a chocolate cake that was supposed to have sauce in the middle which it said on the menu would take ten minutes to make, which we were fine with, but it came after literally one minute and had no sauce in the middle – I think they must have had it already made and standing around which meant the gooey middle had set. I had cannoli with a praline cream which was very good – I think my meal was much more successful than his!

 

Given how many people were around the pool earlier I was expecting the bars to be very busy in the evenings but we did a circuit of the complex and couldn’t find more than about a dozen people!Either they all get taxis into Cancun to go clubbing or because they are drinking all day they are passed out in their rooms! We had a pleasant drink in the cocktail lounge bar, once we had found it – it’s actually above reception and you have to go up a flight of stairs which isn’t signposted.

 

another breakfast

 

As we were very disappointed by the hotel compared to the standard we were expecting and what we had paid for our Kuoni package, we had complained to the rep as soon as we got there – in particular after the way the concierge spoke to me about the smoking issue – and asked to move hotels. We were of course willing to pay the difference, and the rep asked which hotel we would like to move to. As we had no wifi, we went to the hotel reception where we had seen two computers for guest use (for a charge of course). I asked how we logged in and was told dismissively “Oh, the computers don’t work”. Great!

 

When our Kuoni tour had finished I remembered we had dropped one couple off at a hotel with a discreet sign by the gate saying it was part of the Leading Hotels of the World group – so when we spoke to our rep again we asked to move there. He spoke to the head office and the new hotel and rang us back shortly to say it was fine; there was a room at the other hotel we could have. Unfortunately, it then took the Reef nearly 36 hours to confirm that we could leave without being charged for the remainder of our stay, which meant another day and night in a hotel we really wanted to get out of.

 

cheese fondue

 

I spent part of the day by the pool (the one with the net for ball games which wasn’t actually used while I was there- but luckily there was nobody drinking or smoking in this pool) and my boyfriend preferred to stay in our air-conditioned room. We went for breakfast at the buffet restaurant which wasn’t bad at all, and for lunch he joined me outside and we had a burger from the snack bar.

 

lobster

 

That evening we decided to eat in the most upmarket restaurant there, Terraza Grill. The menu was actually very similar to the Italian restaurant we had already been in; my boyfriend had the steak for a $22 surcharge as he really wanted a nice meal – and by that point we were hoping it would be our last meal at the Reef. For that reason I decided to have the lobster for an extra $55, but it came in two halves and one half had been oversalted so badly it was almost inedible - very disappointing at that price (well, at any price!) but by this point I thought it wasn't worth complaining. We had a nice starter of melted cheese with nachos to dip in  and for dessert I had some sort of tequila-infused cake which I can’t remember the name of that was quite nice.

tequila cake

 

Thankfully the next morning we heard from our Kuoni rep who had finally managed to sort out a change of hotel, and we were to be picked up at midday.  If you want somewhere you can drink as much as you like as cheaply as possible, and your room is just somewhere you will sleep off your hangover, then maybe this hotel is fine. But for the luxury break we were expecting it quite simply wasn’t good enough.

 

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Beach Fun Birthday Card

I love outline stickers when it comes to sentiments but they can be hard to use when it comes to actual shapes and pictures. Do you stick them directly onto the card? Or some kind of cardboard backing? And they are often gold, which isn’t a colour I usually use on greetings cards – other than Christmas cards.

 

I once bought a plastic folder for keeping outline stickers in, that came with 20 sets of stickers already. So there are a few sheets I’ve never found all that much use for, including one of beach images. I think this would be quite useful in scrapbooking to make a holiday page but it’s been a long time since I’ve had a beach holiday!

 

Instead, I decided to use them on a birthday card for a friend who has her birthday in August. I wanted to use yellow card to go with the gold stickers but thought they would get a bit lost on a card that was completely yellow, so instead I chose a piece of backing paper with fine coloured dots, as it made me think a little bit of sand. I used that to cover a standard card blank, and mounted a rectangle of yellow card with lacy edges (I think this is a Tattered Lace die cut, which I bought from Ebay) onto that.

 

As well as some beach images like a sandcastle, deckchair, beach ball and shells, I added the words ‘summer fun’ and ‘sun’ as I thought that was related to birthdays as well as holidays. I also put a wave sticker along the bottom of the card but it doesn’t particularly stand out and I think it may have been better without.

 

To make it clear this was a birthday card I used a little banner die-cut from another pack saying ‘on your birthday’ at the top.

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Sonic the Hedgehog Bas-Relief

Bas-relief in cake decorating is rather like applique in sewing or decoupage in card making – it’s a method of building up a flat picture to give a three-dimensional effect. The name bas-relief actually comes from sculpture and carving but is a common technique in cake decorating.

 

 We covered this in the final session of my cake decorating course at South Thames College. As usual I was running late as I had to stay longer than expected at work, so when I arrived, people were colouring their sugarpaste already. The tutor Bridgette had provided a selection of templates – black line drawings printed on A4 paper – including Hello Kitty and Super Mario. Hello Kitty looked quite simple (though the final effect from those who did it) and I wanted something a bit more challenging.

 

I spotted Sonic the Hedgehog which I remembered from computer games of the 1980s (though I never had any Sonic games) – my boyfriend is into computer games and while these days it’s more Call of Duty (and Lego Marvel Superheroes which even I like playing!) I thought Sonic might be a good birthday cake topper to make for him one day.

 

We mixed a little tylose (CMC) powder into the sugarpaste to stiffen it; you don’t need to use expensive flower paste as you don’t need to roll it out that thin, but you do need the icing to be a little harder than regular sugarpaste or fondant.

 

Bridgette had helpfully given me a sheet with exact quantities I needed of each colour so I added gel colour to my icing and weighed out the right amounts.
 

I started off with the head, and cut out Sonic’s head from the template with a pair of scissors. I laid that on top of my blue sugarpaste/CMC mix and cut around it with a knife.

You can put the bas-relief straight onto an iced cake but mine was going onto a cake board which I had already covered with fondant.

 

Place the head on first then cut out the other shapes and place them on top, to build up the layers. The flesh-coloured portion around the mouth was actually rolled into a sausage shape and flattened slightly, rather than cutting out a flat piece.

 

 

For the white parts on the arms and legs, roll some small sausage shapes, cut to the same length and bend over to make an arch.

 

The ear is cut from flat pieces but then added to the head in a standing-up position.

 

 

I think he looks pretty good, don't you?

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