Friday 26 September 2014

Sugarcraft

OK boys and girls, it's time to address a problem we have here in the caking world. I believe we all have this obsession with making ALL things edible on our cakes. I'm talking about fancy flowers and cake toppers. We all brag about our cakes being 100% edible, but let's face it, when was the last time you saw someone chow down on a gumpaste topper?? I feel like I have a job to do here! Should I address this worldwide addiction and host an intervention......or feed the obsession?? Who am I kidding!?! Let's make a gumpaste rose!



Here's what you're going to need:

  1. Gumpaste
  2. Rolling mat
  3. Nesting teardrop cutters
  4. Silicone roller
  5. Thin shaping foam
  6. Thick shaping foam
  7. Ball tool
  8. Toothpick
  9. Edible glue
  10. Cornstarch (or corn flour for you Brits)
  11. Vegetable shortening (Crisco, Trex, any solid veggie fat you can find)
  12. Paintbrush 
  13. Petal dust
  14. That blue thing in my picture LOL I have no idea what it's called but if you don't have one a ziplock bag will do just fine
So the first thing we need to make is a base for our rose. We're going to build the base on the toothpick so we can insert the rose into our cake when we're done. Basically you just need to ball up some gumpaste and taper it on one end so it looks like this. I am using my smallest tear drop cutter as a reference here.


Oh, you should probably make your edible glue now too. This is probably going to be the easiest part of this tutorial. Break off a pea size amount of your gumpaste and dissolve it in a couple tablespoons of water. I usually mash it up with a spoon to get it to dissolve quicker. It's really an exact science you see...

Now I'm going to let you in on the big secret - the key to making realistic looking flowers is to use gumpaste rather than fondant. Gumpaste has way more stretch which allows you to roll it out incredibly thin without it tearing on you. Can you guess what the next step is??? Let's roll out some gumpaste. I like to smear a thin layer of vegetable shortening on my rolling mat before I start to prevent the paste from sticking. I'm going to warn you now, you're going to have to put some muscle into this step. Your gumpaste needs to be paper thin, you should literally be able to see through it!


Do your arms hurt yet?? I've heard that you can use a pasta roller to roll out your gumpaste, just some food for thought. Now it's time for the easy part, take out your smallest cutter and cut out 8 petals. Here comes the instructions for my mystery supply - lift up the clear plastic sheet and slide your petals inside so they don't dry out.  You can also place them in a ziplock bag and zip it up.  DO NOT skip this step.  Gumpaste dries out crazy fast!!!

If you guessed that your gumpaste is thin enough to make your rose, I'm sorry to disappoint you but we're not quite there. It's time to grab your ball tool, cornstarch and your thin and thick foams and let's move on to our next step.



So you need to roll your ball tool around the edge of your petal to thin it out as much as possible. The cornstarch helps your tools to glide over the petal. In the video I was dipping the ball tool in my cornstarch. I have the cornstarch in a dusting pouch so I can also grab the pouch and dust the whole petal if I need to. Next place the petal on your thick foam and punch it right in the middle and drag your tool towards the tip of the teardrop. This makes your petal form a nice cup shape. You need to do this to every single petal of your rose.

Moving on, it's time to form the middle of the rose or the "bud". Basically you will need to take 3 of your petals and wrap them around your rose base. You want to attach them so the pointy end is facing down. Basically just space them evenly around the base (they will overlap) and attach them using your edible glue. The middle of the rose should be quite tight.

Now take your remaining petals and attach them around your bud, but not as tight as last time so it looks like an open rose.

Now you're just going to repeat this process using the next size tear drop cutter. You can add as many petals as you want to get your desired size.  Just remember to keep opening your petals up for each layer you add.


For this rose I used 3 sizes of cutters and the rose is about 3-1/2" wide. To finish it off dip a paint brush in some petal dust and apply the dust into the crevices. If you tried out my tutorial, post a picture of your rose in the comments, I can't wait to see your creations!

Now I just need to make a cake to put this on......

3 comments:

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  3. Hi, the rose is lovely, thanks for the tutorial! X Bibi

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