Big Blooms by Tara Gan, A Review by Claire Hall

Claire Hall chose Fair Cake recently for two very different cake classes. One of these was Big Blooms taught by Tara Gan of Tara Gan Sugar Flowers fame. These are Claire’s words and pictures about her learning experience at our workshop. This is a two day sugar flowers workshop that runs from 10am to 5pm and is packed full of sugar flower making wisdom that only a multiple award winning sugarcraft artist, such as Tara, can dispense!

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The sugar flower course I chose was ‘Big Blooms’ with Tara Gan. I have tried my hand at flower making before but without the proper instructions they were far from amazing. We were making the Southern Magnolia, Open Peony and Delicate Rose over 2 days. I was most excited about learning the peony but by the end, my favourite flower to make was definitely the rose.

The 3 different flowers were carefully selected as they were each made and put together using different techniques. Either making individual petals and allowing them to dry before assembling or wet on wet assembly.

Most of the cutting and shaping was done on the first day as we needed the components to dry before we could add colour and assemble on the second day. As we made each flower from start to finish I felt we had sufficient time to practice and get the hang of what we were doing with each petal. Tara was great at watching us carefully and correcting us where needed.

I was rather nervous when it came to adding colour as my art skills hover around being able to draw a stick man but with Tara’s guidance I was able to make my flowers come to life.

This class turned out to be way more brain taxing than I had thought possible with cake decorating. I enjoy attention to detail and so many tiny details go into making flowers look ‘real’.

I’d really like to thank Tara for her attention to detail and taking the time to explain it all so well to us! 

Follow Claire’s cake journey on her beautiful Instagram page, here at @sprinklesinthewild