Experimenting with "Cake Wires"

My mom is one of my favorite clients. She is so good at gushing about how wonderful my desserts are that I leave her house feeling pretty darn special every time I deliver a cake (and let's be honest, even when I go over empty handed). This time she wanted a birthday cake for two of her dear friends celebrating milestone birthdays at their monthly dinner group party. I have known Janie and Sharon since I was little, so it was an honor to make them a treat for their special days!

Mom knew she wanted a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream and chocolate chips on the sides (a family favorite), but gave me free reign to decorate the cake however I wanted. I took the opportunity to experiment a little with a product I'd seen and been wanting to try. Duff Goldman, the man behind the Food Network show Ace of Cakes has recently come out with a new line of cake decorating products, and I have been wanting to find a way to use these "cake wires." My initial plan was to hang the fondant stars with their names on them from the wires and have them dangle off the side of the cake, but I didn't make the stars far enough ahead of time for them to get totally hard, so when I tried to hang them they broke. But even before they broke, I had a hard time figuring out where to place them, because of their curlie-cue shape. No matter where I put them they looked funny, plus they made holes in the cake. As a back up plan I hung some purple balls from the wires instead, and put the stars on the top of the cake. It ended up looking kind of intergallactic with the stars and the "alien antennae" that the wires reminded me of. When all was said and done, the cake was DELICIOUS, but I wasn't sure I would bother with the wires again.

But leave it to my mom to find another good use for them. I walked in to her dining room today to find this adorable addition to her flower arrangement. Maybe I just need to go buy some flowers to make use of the rest of the wires!