Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Hi, I’ve been asked to make a cake with Asters on and can’t find how to go about making them. Has anyone made any before and if so how? thanks in advance

Hi Michellejones,

When I am making flowers I use either flower paste or mexican paste. I look at pictures on my laptop till I know how the flower looks. An Aster is like a daisy but the petals are much finer.

What I would do is to use a daisy cutter and then using a sharp knife cut each petal down the length 3 or 4 times if you can to produce the amount and shape of the petals. You made need to do 2 or 3 layers to achieve the best result. I have tried looking on YouTube for you but could only find daisy’s. Perhaps if you looked on YouTube you may find something similar. I hope this helped you somewhat.

You can also pipe them on a cake using royal icing but I do not know how to do that.

Thank you Jgibb, I tried looking and couldn’t find anything but I did find a book called “Complete Book of Sugar Flowers” by Lesley Herbert which shows how to make an Aster so hopefully I will be OK. Thanks for looking though

Hi Michelle

Asters are very delicate little flowers, they’re very simple to make all you need to do is follow Paul’s tutorial on the daisy flower. You’ll need to cut out two flowers and then cut each petal into three with a craft knife. Use the bone tool and stroke each petal from the tip towards the centre. This will thin and cup the petals. Put a little edible glue in the centre of one flower and place the other one on top, stick it down with the bone tool as it will shape the flower. (hard describing this!), make yellow centres and use the tutorial for the wiring step. Have a look at pictures of real asters for making and wiring the leaves. When you make the calyx, cut out three different sizes of the daisy flower, cut the two biggest ones into two and stick all of them together with glue. Gosh that was a marathon. I made some back in April, along with poppies, mums and daisies for my neighbours 70th birthday. Bless her, she has kept them all! Hope this helps and you’re not confussed! xx

Hi madeitwithlove and thank you, I understood till you got to calyx bit and then you lost me lol. Can’t seem to find Paul’s tutorial on daisies, where abouts is it?

Daisy flower is in blog. You’ve got the Lesley Herbert book, that’s the one I followed so you’ll be able to get a better idea of what I’ve described. I’m no good at wiring, so just follow the book or the tutorial. I have lots of books on gardening and dry flowers so I tend to look at them.

Thanks again, will go and have a look at the blog now and wait for my book to arrive x

Hi again, one last question – Do you think I would be able to make them with fondant or am I best to use flower paste, the flowers are to go on the cake board right up next to the cake

Hi Michell

I don’t think fondant would be as good a gum paste/ Mexican paste. Asters are very delicate so you wouldn’t be able to thin them out as much with fondant to make them look realistic. I find delicate flowers always snap if made with fondant but you could try half and half for a softer flower. You could also make a couple with fondant to see if they hold up. x