Sugar flowers, what are they? Can you eat them? How long does it take you to make one? Today I’m going to do my best to answer any questions you may have about sugar flowers and where to get started so that you can make them too. Firstly I’d like to state that I’m always learning so this may continue to be amended or have additional posts in the future to support it as time goes on and I learn new things. For now, I’m going to get you started with the information that I wish I had when I first started making flowers a few years ago.
What are sugar flowers?
Well to put it plainly they are life-like (realistic) flowers made of gum paste. Gum paste is a sugar “clay” traditionally made with egg whites, confectioner’s sugar, a gumming agent i.e. tylose powder, and vegetable shortening. In my recipe I use good quality reduced aquafaba in place of the egg whites and organic confectioner’s sugar and it works perfectly. I will provide a recipe for my gum paste as a PDF.
What are they used for?
Sugar flowers are typically used in cake artistry to adorn cakes. More recently artists have been using them to create things that are typically made with real flowers like bouquets and wreaths. However, they are fragile so those projects are typically only meant for photo styling purposes. Most of the time the flowers used to design cakes are kept by wedded couples as a keepsake. With that being said I’ll address the most common question I get asked. Can you eat them? Yes and no, yes because all the ingredients are edible, no because they really don’t taste great. Just enjoy them for want they are, true beauties.
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