A Flowery Weekend with Nicholas Lodge

The day finally arrived!  I have been waiting impatiently for this day to come... A two FULL days of sugar flower making with the one of the best in the industry, NICHOLAS LODGE!  Nicholas Lodge is one of the most respectable, brilliant, and amazing sugar artists in the world.  It's very hard to differentiate between his sugar flower works and the real flowers.
I took his sugar flower classes on Craftsy and immediately I said to myself, I MUST learn from him in person.  He is very methodical and precise.  From just the two wonderful Craftsy classes, I have learnt A LOT!

He offered two wonderful classes for his trip to Vancouver this time.  The fall basket and the Exotic Sugar Orchids.  I chose the latter though I'd love to take both classes due to the practicality of the latter class to be applied to wedding cakes and such.

The Master Sugar Flower at work... showing his magic

Chef Lodge's class is fun, fast-paced, and very informative.  He showed us a lot of neat tips and tricks along the way.  He is very precise in his method, and I believed that later I should be able to replicate at home.  On one note though, this class probably more catered to those with some previous sugar flower work.  I am still a novice at this sugar flower making, and I have to pace myself to work a little faster to go along with the class.  Regardless, in the wet and rainy Vancouver days, we managed to learn to make 6 types of Exotic and Tropical Orchids.

Thank you to Nanette of Devine Deals in New Westminster, BC who hosted Chef Lodge for this wonderful class!  Until next time!

Adventure in Sugar Flowers

It was not an easy journey, but I am embracing it.  Breakages, tears, some wires pushed through the petals, and my 2 year old smashed them on the table were all part of the "fun."  Lesson learnt and we're moving on. 
It's so exciting to seeing the petals all there as I am waiting for them to dry up. There's a sense of urgency in putting them together. And just like that a flower is born.
Sugar flowers are something new and exciting for me.  Creating and imitating what nature provides for us is quite an adventure.  I always intrigued with sugar flowers, of how sugar flower masters like Nicholas Lodge, Alan Dunn, and Ron Ben-Israel do it.  I slowly learned how to make them.  I pored through books and online picture tutorials of how to make them.  Then, I found craftsy.com, is where I learned to make sugar hydrangeas through the fabulous teacher, Jacqueline Butler of Petalsweet Cakes.  She is a fantastic teacher and I was very lucky to be able to learned from her in one of her classes during Cake Love 2012.  What an eye opener that class was.  When I looked back to the craftsy online tutorial, I was more confident with the technique and although my flowers are far than perfect, they are significantly better than before.  I braved myself to make more flowers and bought another tutorial from craftsy again, and this time it's making sugar orchids with James Rosselle.  I ended up making about 5 of those sugar orchids.  By orchids no.4, they look much better than no.1 or no. 2 and 3. 
I used the sugar flowers as part of my Mom-in-law's birthday celebration.  She wanted a show-stopper cake and a table spread.  We looked at what we have at home and we did a simple yet effective table spread with a very minimal cost.
Here are some photos from the event, and the picture of the cake that I made for her.

table spread with the view of the red velvet cupcake tiers

side view of the cake with sugar orchids and hydrangeas

"beauty shot" of the cake

close up of the sugar orchids