Adding flowers to a cake.

Beautiful dried edible flowers from Polly's petals, glued onto a fondant covered wedding cake.

Beautiful flowers on a cake can really make a huge impact. Flouncy big dahlias, classic romantic roses, or cute pretty little pansies and cornflowers. Flowers are just a really fun way to create a beautiful and special cake. But there are some important rules and things you need to know before you start poking pretty blooms into your tasty fresh cake! Handy hint: You should never be straight up poking a flower stem into your cake!

I’m going to break this down into some easy to access bite size chunks for you so you can scan through to the important useful bits you need to know!

Fresh flowers

Fresh flowers sealed and pinned to the side of the cake using cake pins.

These are readily available from any florist and most supermarkets. But please, do not just poke these into your cake. It can be really dangerous. The flowers on the high street will have been grown in countries all over the world and they use a wide range of pesticides, I'm sure the rules for the chemicals they can use will change in different countries too. All of these make for beautiful flowers but they will be rather dangerous to put straight into a cake.

When adding fresh flowers to a cake the flowers and stems should be wrapped and sealed before they are to go anywhere near a cake. The professional solution is to use Flower tape and posy picks. The tape can be used to wrap around the stem and seal it so any water from the flower can not get into the cake. Then a Posy pick, which is like a small plastic tube closed at one end, should be used to fit the covered stem into so you then have something safe you can poke into the cake. There is also a product called "stem seal" which is like an edible wax which you can dip the stem into a few times to coat it and seal the tip of the flower stem. This is super easy to use and highly recommended. If you use the Stem seal you don't actually have to use the posy picks as long as the stems are completely covered. Alternatively, you can use acrylic cake pins. These pin the stems to the outside of the cake without actually poking the stems into the cake. Flower stems should still always be wrapped or sealed though so that any drips of flower water can not get near the edible cake parts. They will also ruin your fondant if they drip on it!

In an emergency, you could use cling film, or tin foil to seal the stem and then a drinking straw, cut longer than the flower stem, to use to encase the stem. But I would recommend this is a last resort and the proper products are used where possible.

Some flowers, especially some of the most popular ones for cakes, are toxic and will either give you a very poorly tummy or even poison you! These should never be near a cake, and I would never recommend using these on any edible item, but there are ways to make it a little safer if you are insistent on using them to get the look you want. See below for a lost of some of the more commonly used toxic flowers but do always check you have identified your flowers correctly and done your own research before you use any on a cake.

Do be very careful with buttercream cakes as the flowers, pollen and any drips from the stems can easily get caught up in soft buttercream and be accidentally ingested. A fondant covered cake will be much easier to protect and petals are less likely to stick to the icing, but again, caution should still be taken to ensure toxic and poisonous flowers are not eaten.

Silk flowers, wrapped and in posy picks on a Semi-naked buttercream cake.

Silk flowers

These are easy to find and easy to use. You can get beautiful flowers in the perfect colours and out of season, and they will last for forever. The stems are usually wired though so if you want to add silk flowers to a cake you will still need to ensure the stems are wrapped or sealed and put into a posy pick to prevent rusting into your cake. It is always worth giving them a little wipe or a wash in warm soapy water, and rinsed, where possible. These can sometimes be sat about in grubby warehouses for a while and you just never know where they have been before you want to be poking them into a cake!

Edible flowers

Beautiful fresh edible flowers from Badgers Garden, Bucks

This is my favourite option but it does rely on seasonal availability. Find yourself a good, local, edible flowers supplier and you are on to a winner! Edible flower suppliers will provide you with a quality product that not only looks great it’s super safe to use on your cakes. The only catch is that you are at the mercy of the seasons. I've lost count how many times I've asked my supplier for something I think will look amazing, just to be told it's not in season yet! But, when you get it right, this is always by best choice.

It is worth mentioning that you can actually use any edible flowers from your own garden to add to your cakes, as long as you don't use any pesticides or chemicals and they have been growing for at least 3 months so any chemicals used at the garden center will have left their system. Do always check and make certain they are edible though, if in doubt, do not use them! A favourite book I use is Botanical Baking by Juliet Sear, it does explain a lot of the basics and that you can eat in your garden.

Sugar flowers.

Sugar flowers without wires, glued directly to a wedding cake.

These are beautiful, you can have exactly the colours and flowers you like to match your cake vibe but... these take a long time to make, they are extremely fragile and to get them made properly by a professional they can be rather expensive. But they are absolutely gorgeous. They are however, usually fixed onto wires so they need to be sealed, wrapped and in posy picks just like real flowers so that the wires don't rust into your cake. You can cheat a little and they can be fixed directly onto your cake providing there are no wires to poke into the cake.

These can be called fondant flowers, sugarpaste flowers or simply sugarflowers.

Dried flowers

Dried flowers attached to a dummy tier, with a cage style spacer tier to keep as much distance as possible from the edible cake tier at the top.

Dried and pressed edible flowers are available but there are many options and you need to be careful that what you are buying is edible and food safe and not intended for hobbies and craft projects. There is a huge difference and Google does not always do you right on this one!

There are several amazing companies that provide dried edible flowers, these are fabulous but do make sure they specifically say that they are edible.

Dried flowers also includes the pretty fluffy pampas grass and bunny tails. You know, the ones with the fans and the fluffy bits, these are NOT usually food safe. They are often dyed or painted, or even sprayed with gold paint and intended for craft projects or displays in the home, Not suitable for cakes at all! A lot will have non edible glitter and I have found they usually shed all the seeds and fluffy bits. You definitely don’t want these near your edible cake.

Handy hints and useful tips

There are a few little ways to cheat the rules and still get that lux feel and the aesthetic you are after, without compromising the safety of your guests or the vibe you were going for!

Silk flowers pinned to the side of a wedding cake. Only the acrylic pins actually poke into the edible cake.

Dummy tiers

Maybe have a polystyrene tier at the base with the flowers attached to this so all the inedible bits are kept away from the edible cake tiers. Also called faux, dummy or polly/polystyrene tiers.

Spacer tiers

These include acrylic tiers, decorative layers that are to add height rather than extra cake, these will also help keep the stuff you don't want, away from the cake you do want.

Fondant covered cakes

Fondant is definitely a bit safer than buttercream as things are less likely to stick to the icing and get eaten by accident.

Cut your cake carefully

This is my least favorable option but some people are stuck with their plans and will do this anyway. If you take care when cutting the cake to leave a wide gap from the bits you don't want to eat and only serve the cake from the other side that has not been in contact with the flowers.

Wafer paper flowers,

These are a lot more forgiving than fondant flowers but they do still take a little while to make so they won't be the cheaper option but they are less brittle than sugarpaste and fondant so a bit more forgiving. They also enable you to be a little more creative and modern with your designs and can enable a more flowing element to your cake. Again, the stems will still need to be wrapped, sealed and in posy picks before they go into your cake.

Use fake flowers!

Then, as long as you seal the stems, there isn't a lot that can go wrong.

Use edible flowers.

This is by far the easiest and safest option as they are all edible so you have to be much less careful and you can be truly creative and fearless in your cake creations.

Edible flowers from Badgers Garden, on vanilla cupcakes , with edible gold leaf

Suppliers that I love

Badgers garden, Based in Lacy Green, Buckinghamshire. They provide high quality edible flowers to Michelin star restaurants. Always helpful and you can bespoke order the box of exactly what you need.

Pollys petals. This is where I get my dried edible flowers for my wedding cakes. they are super helpful and really good quality.

Nurtured in Norfolk. Another highly recommended supplier of fresh edible flowers.

Marks & Spencer. larger stores do sell edible violas which are so cute.

Etsy/Amazon - There are loads of sites that sell edible flowers. Do be cautious, its a bit of a minefield, double check you know what you are ordering and the quality can vary a bit but sometimes you get lucky!

Toxic flowers you want to avoid.

It has surprised me over the years how many florists and cake makers that don't know which flowers are actually toxic, and even a few that don't know to use posy picks or wrap the stems. I have heard nightmare stories from venues of cakes with poisonous flowers just poked in them without any protections. So if in doubt, just don't use them. No pretty photo is worth risking the safety of your guests.

These flowers are all seriously toxic and should be avoided where possible:

Gypsophelia / baby’s breath

Eucalyptus

Hydrangeas

Most bulbs - daffodils, tulips, hyacinth

Sweet peas

Lilies

Foxgloves

Azaelias

Ivy

There are many more flowers that are toxic or poisonous, this is just a few of the more common ones that are used regularly in wedding flowers.

It is important to note that this is just a guide with some helpful tips and by no means an exhaustive list of advice. It is always recommended that you check the flowers for yourself and do your homework before you add any flowers to a cake of your own. If in doubt, don't use it.

xxx