Red Velvet Romance

        Fluffy red cake flavoured with a hint of chocolate and finished off with an airy white icing. The deep red cake against the snowy white frosting is what makes a red velvet cake so well known and popular today. Recently I have noticed that red velvet cake has become all the rage on  t.v. Popular celebrity bakers on reality t.v. shows, like TLC's Cake Boss or the ladies from DC Cupcakes, seem to be making these cakes all the time now. I've decided to give these little red cakes a shot. In this post I'm going to be making red velvet cupcakes with white icing; but with a little twist. Even though it's not Valentines Day, there are many other days of the year that you might want to make a romantic treat for someone you love.  I have topped my red velvet cupcakes with pink jelly roses to add that special touch. They are actually pretty simple to make and they look lovely :)

To make this post a quick read, I have decided to just show you how to make a candy rose. But I won't leave you high and dry without a recipe for the cupcakes! Here is a good one for red velvet cupcakes: http://www.marthastewart.com/317517/red-velvet-cupcakes

How to make Jelly Roses

  Making jelly roses may seem like it would be something hard to do, especially for people who aren't very artistic. But I can assure you that you will be surprised to learn that making jelly roses for cake decorating is not really that hard. :)

How to make Fondant/Gumpaste/Gumdrop Roses: The Wilton® Method*
* The Wilton Cake Method: Candy Roses [12.]

    The Wilton cake company's method for making fondant roses by hand is actually the first way that I learned how to make roses for cake decorating. You can use this method to make roses with fondant, gumpaste or in my case, sugar coated gumdrops. If you follow the instructions, you will be able to make lovely little roses that will impress anyone :D

Step 1: Start off by making the base of your rose. Make a small ball of fondant (or whatever you are using), it should be about 3/4 in in diameter. Then roll one end of the ball into a tip that is about 1 1/2 in. high.

Step 2: Now for the petals! Make a 3/8 in ball of fondant and press it flat into a little disk. The disk should be about about 1/4 in thick. This is going to make a petal, and should be about the size of a nickel in diameter. Make 3 more petal disks (4 in total).

Step 3: Take a petal and wrap it around the tip of your rose base to form the centre of the rose (the bud).

Step 4: Wrap 3 more petals around the rose bud to make the inner ring of petals. Make sure to gently press each petal into the base of your rose. **Note: When attaching petals around the bud, you can lightly dab a little bit of water onto the rose base where you want to attach each petal. This will help make the petal stick. Gently curl back the edge of the petals with a toothpick, using the rounded edge.

  

Step 5: Now make 5 more petal disks, but make the ball you start off with a little bigger so that your petals will be a bit bigger than before. With your fingertips, press the outside edge of the petal disks to thin it out on one side. This will help to make the rose look more lifelike. Then take your petals and wrap them around your rose to finish it off. When doing this, you want to place the petals so that the lower edges of the petals tuck into one another a bit to create that nice layering effect that real roses have.

  

* All photos used for these instructions are thanks to Wilton Ind. [12.]

There you have it! A pretty little rose to place on top of your cupcake :) If you find that you have built up excess fondant/gumdrop at the bottom of the rose, you can trim it down a little.

Top off your iced cupcake with one, two or as many of these as you like. It's sure to win over anyone you make it for :)