Back to Blog

What Else Can I Make with Sugarpaste?

Published 10 April 2012 by Serena Rizzi

As we talked about in Issue 1, there are three types of icing that are suitable for 'modelling'. There's sugarpaste (very versatile, soft and good for covering cakes), gum paste (sugar paste stiffened with gum tragacanth) and flower paste (used for sugarcraft flowers).

Working with these three types of icing is an essential skill to learn for cake decorating beginners if you want to create 3D objects and model characters for novelty cakes.

 

 

Once you know the basics of how to mix, colour, and flavour these ingredients, you can make pretty much anything you like. You can even use techniques from other arts and crafts to make patterned motifs or objects that are true to life.These sugarpaste strawberries are very cute and perfect for a summery cake. They're pretty easy to make too. If you've ever modelled in plasticine, well, it's pretty much the same technique here. You can use specialist cake decorating tools to give your sugarpaste fruit just the right finish and character (here a dresden/veining tool is being used)
Check out the full tutorial here: http://cakejournal.com/tutorials/how-to-make-gum-paste-strawberries/

 

 

These soon-to-be-extinct sugarpaste dinosaurs (ha ha) are not too much harder to make than the sugarpaste strawberries above. They have to be designed in parts and then stuck together. See more at: http://www.abakedcreation.com/2009/06/dinosaur-birthday-cupcakes.html

The art of making sugarcraft flowers takes a long time to perfect but in our series we will be teaching you the basics that you can build up over time. Put all the skills you learn together and you can make complex displays to decorate cakes, such as the one below. The sugarpaste is stiffened with some 'gum tragacanth', which helps to make more delicate models. This is often called 'gum paste'. You can also buy specialist 'flower paste' in decorating shops. The roses in this image were probably created with gum paste or flower paste rolled in food colouring, painted for colour accents and cut with special petal cutting tools.

You will probably have to experiment with all of the ingredients mentioned here to get the perfect consistency for your own modelling and sugarcraft projects. The more you practice, the better you will get at making models that look just like characters and objects.  If you get inspired then do post your creations to our Facebook album: http://www.facebook.com/mycakedecorating