Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Hi all

I have been asked by a friend to make hes daughters wedding cake. She is English and is marrying a South African and when i asked what sort of cake design he said flags and stuff.
I want to incorporate elements from England and South Africa into the decorations but would love some ideas from people.
I have found out that the national flower for South Africa is the King Protea so one idea would be to make this and some red roses. The problem is i cant find any cutters for this in the UK and it looks quite complicated. (Im not very experienced and have only done roses so far although would love to try this).

Thanks for any thoughts and ideas x

Hi Jb 1958

For cutters found this http://www.floralartandsugarcraft.com/images/cutters/King%20protea%2007-0016.jpg.
For ideas we will all have to put on thinking caps. SA is famous for so many sporting things then there’s the animals and famous land marks like table top mountain.The flower doesn’t look too difficult to make, when you get into the link scroll down quite a long way and you’ll see it on the right hand side. There’ll be a flood of ideas
from other members.x

The flag would be easy to do but I would just incorporate the colours somewhere as I don’t think a flag on a wedding cake would look nice. Then there are the thorn trees, the rooi bok, the white beaches etc etc…brings back so many memories for me…..SA is in my soul and one day I will go back x

Some more ideas, spears and shields, ceremonial masks, rugby ball and may be seashells??? Thought you might like to have a browse here http://lovelylittledetails.com/2011/03/21/floral-spotlight-protea/. I think the peony flower and thistle tutorials might be useful, some similar features in leaves and stamens.

Thanks for the ideas. I’m really struggling to visual this cake as the colours are so bold and I tend to go for quite simple clean cakes (if that makes sense). I only do cakes as a hobby although I wish I had started a long time ago as really enjoy it. Will look at all the ideas and see what I can visualise.
Would love to know if all you fab cake makers ever struggle with ideas or if you visualise the cake straight away x

In that lovelylittledetails link, there’s a cake with the flower on it, looks lovely. x

It does look nice. Just wondering if I manage to make the protea do you think it would look ok with red roses as I need to incorporate England into the cake

I don’t see why red roses wouldn’t work with it. Have a play on a small scale, when you can see it you’ll get other ideas how to link them together. I’ve been looking out for a tutorial for you but still haven’t come across one, I’ve been searching South African wedding cakes. Another idea for England could be Britannia, shield and trident, three lions on a shield and St George and the dragon which I think would be too difficult. Then you’ve got Houses of Parliament, Buck House, Beefeaters, St Paul’s cathedral. These sort of things could be printed images forming a skyline around the cake, it could be tied in with SA land marks.