One of my aims for this year is to learn to make more sugar flowers. I have been practising some blossoms, these have been going OK, So I have moved on to something a little more complex. The anemone.
This is the first time I have made anemone flowers, it took me a while to find a cutter set that I liked, many of the ones I found were smaller than I wanted, I eventually settled on this one by JEM.
Equipment
To make the flowers, you will need
Petal or gum paste for the petals (I used Squires Kitchen Sugar Florist Paste in pale pink)
Contrasting gum or petal paste for the flower's centres.
Anemone Cutter
Rolling pin
A plastic wallet cut down the edges
Ball Tool
Petal veining tool
Foam sugar craft pad
A little vegetable fat (TREX or Crisco)
A little cornflour / cornstarch
Flower formers
Packing material
A little edible glue or a water pen
Stamens for sugar flowers (I got mine from a local sugar craft shop, note that these are not edible)
Sanding sugar
Method
1. Smear a little vegetable fat on to your work surface, this helps the petal paste stick and also helps it not to stick (strange but true)
2.Roll out the petal or gum paste as thin as you can. You should be able to see through it. I can never get mine quite that thin, but I keep trying
3. Use your cutter to cut your flower shapes and giving them a little wiggle as you cut to ensure clean edges
4. Once cut, lift the petal shapes and put them inside a plastic wallet to stop them drying out.
5. Sprinkle a little cornflour onto the foam pad.
6. Take the first, largest, petal piece and ball tool around the edges to thin them out and frill the petal a little. The ball tool should be half on and half off the petal
7. Use the veining tool to add veining to the petals.
It is usually recommended that you vein then ball. It is one of those no win situations. The balling takes the veining out a bit and the veining takes the ball tooling out a bit. Sometimes, I ball, vein and then ball again!
8. Place the flower in a flower former to dry. If necessary use some little cut up pieces of those packaging bits to prop the petals up and make the flowers a nice shape
10. Use some more cut up bits of packing pieces to arrange the petals nicely
11. Repeat for the final layer
12. Roll a small piece of petal paste for the centre into a ball and then flatten it slightly
13. Cut the stamens to about 1cm
14. Dip each stamen into edible glue and then push around the edge of the centre
15. Brush the top of the flower centre with edible glue, then dip it into the sanding sugar.
16. Stick the centre onto the flower using water or edible glue
Leave them to dry for at least a few hours, preferably overnight and they are all finished and ready for your cake
That's all for today
Thanks for popping by and please call again soon
Keep up with my latest creations and inspirations in all these places
No comments:
Post a Comment