Floral on cakes is a trend that never dies, and do you know what are the difference between them? Be it on your wedding cake or your celebration cake, as a consumer it is paramount for you to know the difference and make the correct choices for your event.
Different type of Flowers on your Cake
There are 3 main types of floral cake in the market now namely edible flower, buttercream flower and fresh flower.
Handmade Edible flower
This is a 100% hand crafted and hand made product where the artist painstakely make every single petal and glue them with an edible medium for it to look at an actual flower. It can be made of various medium Gum paste aka sugar, Chocolate or wafer paper. Whichever the medium is, this is a handmade work of art which can last almost forever (if you keep it in correct conditions) and it will make a beautiful momento for your wedding day/celebration.
Here’s something which my beautiful bride saved from her big day.
All you need to do is to keep it in an air tight container in a cool dry place and it will be a good medium to last pretty much forever.
Pros
- Resemble real flowers which is super beautiful on the cake
- Flowers can be applied on both fondant and buttercream cake in all angles (top and sides) to achieve dimension and height
- Non heat sensitive, can be a great choice for outdoor weddings
- Food safe and edible
- Flowers can last forever and can be kept as a memento
- Can be toned to any color to match your wedding theme
Cons
- Relatively expensive compared to other mediums
- The chef serving the cake will have to remove it from the cake before serving
- Chances of contamination of flower
Buttercream Flowers
Buttercream flowers are hand crafted by our most experienced cake decorators. Every single petal is hand piped and created, then applied to the cake using buttercream. The buttercream flower is beautiful, cost effective and great for both birthdays and weddings.
Pros
- 100% edible and it is delicious considering that it is hand piped from buttercream
- Can be toned to any color to match your wedding theme
- Relatively affordable compared to hand made edible flowers
- Every guest will have a slice of cake decorated by the flowers
- Food safe and edible
Cons
- Flowers can only be applied on the surface so height and dimension cannot be achieved
- Heat sensitive so it can only be used in venue
Fresh flowers
Fresh flowers can be classified as edible fresh flower which is organic and pesticide free and planted for edible purposes or non edible fresh flowers. In Singapore organic fresh flowers are insanely expensive or totally impossible to get/buy.
Non edible fresh flowers, alot of cake decorators use fresh flowers to decorate their cakes however little do consumers and most cake decorators know that fresh flowers have toxic saps and pollen which are bad for health and deadly for little ones. Whist it is a relatively cheap choice to decorate the cake and alot of cake decorators do wrap the stem with aluminium, the pesticide on the flower is still transferable to the cake.
From my experience there are bugs hiding in the cake and most of the times cross contamination will happen when fertilisers and pesticides stained petals come in contact with the cake - this could bring potential legal problem to you in the future.
Pros
- Non organic flowers are Cost effective and cheap compared to handmade flowers
- Very pretty on your cake
- Great choice to decorate dummy cake for cakes which no one is eating
Cons
- Contains toxic saps which might bring you legal issues
- Cross contamination will occur when the petals stained with pesticide and fertilisers come in contact with cake