I have a question to ask you fellow bakers.  I've been watching some tutorials on Youtube and a few other locations.  I'd always read, and was told by a few other bakers, that if you wanted the dusting of petal dusts to stay on your gumpaste/fondant flowers/figures and not come off on your fingers or have finger prints show up on them, etc., that you had to steam them, but when I was watching some tutorials, I noticed that they didn't steam them at all, just finished putting them together, finalized them, and put them aside until they did the actual decorating.  So....do they need to be steamed or not to set the colors and "dust"?  I've always steamed mine based on what I'd been told when I first started working with gumpaste/fondant and petal dusts.  Now I'm kind of confused.

A

I've never used steam and my petal and or pearl dust always sets and stays on. I have found that the bristles on the brush makes a difference. I once used a brush with nylon bristles and the dust would not stick, but when I used the other bristles (not sure of the material but they're softer and flexible), I had great results!

Thanks.  I'll have to give that a try then.  I've always hated having to wait for them to dry, but I had gotten the info from someone who had been decorating for  quite a few years, so I thought she knew what she was talking about.  The one thing I hated about steaming them was that it made them a bit shiny.....and flowers weren't necessarily shiny.  Now I can try something new and a bit quicker.  Will help a lot in making flowers for my son's wedding cake!

I don't steam mine either. In fact, I was thinking of picking up a new hand held steamer just for the pieces I want shiny, specifically not for flowers.