I decided to create my daughter’s birthday cake’s decorations from Gum Paste this year. I’ve wanted to try it for years and finally dug in. I made my own red and green gum paste from wilton’s glucose and gum-tex. I made the white from Marshmallows and gum-tex. While they both taste okay, the marshmallow gum paste is by far the best (I added a touch of almond extract.) They were both very easy to work with as long as I had my tub of shortening nearby to grease the bowls, cutters and my hands.
I can’t decide if this was a frugal hobby to start or not :P. I had to buy the glucose, gum-tex, fondant tool set and flower creator set. I used 40% off coupons at Hobby Lobby and kept going back until I collected each item I needed. This was by far the most affordable way to shop. I compared prices with Amazon, Ebay, and Jo-Ann before buying.
The nice part is I have plenty of glucose and gum-tex left to decorate many a cake and the tools will last forever if I take care of them. I’d love to make my mother a beautiful rose covered birthday cake in October. We’ll see how hard they are! I’m also invisioning cupcakes with single gum paste daisies on the top :).
I glued the tops to the strawberries with a homemade edible glue. The recipe is 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons boiled water and 1 tsp gum-tex. Mix it all up and let it sit in the fridge. The lumps will disappear overnight. I didn’t wait for the lumps to disappear and just dipped my paintbrush in and around them. It still worked great.
The centers on the strawberry blossoms are a dot of glue and a dot of yellow sugar. So pretty and sparkly! I brushed some of the leaves with green pearl powder for shimmer. I texturized the leaves by pressing them into a silk flower leaf. I think I’ll put a leave texturizing plate on my birthday list. The silk leaf did okay but the texture is more subtle than I was hoping for.
P.S. In my research for this project, I learned the difference between gum paste and rolled fondant is just a little gum-tex. This makes the gum paste creations dry hard while fondant will stay soft and pliable. I also read that you can use denture powder instead of gum-tex, but Wilton’s gum-tex at Hobby Lobby with a coupon was more affordable and it made me feel better that it was actually created for the purpose. (The denture powder had warnings on it about swallowing too much!)
In case you do not have homemade recipe for Marshmallow Fondant, I thought I’d share the one I have (obtained from a daughter of a friend). 🙂
Marshmallow Fondant
1-10oz bag mini marshmallows
1-2lb bag powdered sugar
2-3 TBS water
empty marshmallows into plastic bowl, sprinkle water on top.
Place bowl in microwave for 1 min 45 seconds.
Stir melted marsmallows til smooth
empty marsmallows and half of powdered sugar into mixer with dough hook attachment.
let mix on low until mostly blended,
slowly add rest of sugar until consistency of “play-doh” and not sticky to touch.
too much powdered sugar can make the fondant too hard and dry.
To use,
spray pam/nonstick spray on clean surface,
roll out with rolling pin like dough.
OR, use to mold objects.
To add color,
knead in small amount of gel food dye until blended evenly.
Angela,
They look great! I have worked with fondant myself for a couple of years now…the recipe above works great, is cheap, and does harden over night…the only thing is that it is SO MESSY to make! and VERY STICKY, but it tastes wonderful!
Emily, I had better luck with my marshmallow fondant when I remembered to grease the bowl first and used my kitchen aid to knead it all together.
Beautiful! Great job! 🙂