Hi Everyone,

Firstly, I must apologise to you. I have baked before, but never done any kind of decorating. So I'm sorry if I'm asking silly questions. I'm from the UK.

My family bought my a rather large bakery book. I'm looking at a couple of the ingredients lists and I'm already confused!!

Ok so a cupcake recipe includes several pages on making your own decorations from white flowerpaste, but flies past what Flower Paste actually is! After a quick look online it's very expensive. So I'm wondering what you all buy and where you buy it from?

Secondly, a cake recipe talks about icing and decorating a cake with sugarpaste/regal icing/rolled fondant. Can this be made from adding water to fondant icing sugar (thinking of silver spoon brand) in the same way that royal icing can be made from adding water to royal icing sugar (again, silver spoon brand)??

My final question - is sugarpaste what is usually used to ice a cake? because I've never heard of it before today!

Welcome to CC. I hope someone in the UK responds to your post, because I'm in the US, and most of the things you're inquiring about are called something different.

Keep reading this forum. You'll learn an amazing amount of information and tips.

Hei.

I know what u mean. I remember i had the same confusions.

Gum paste/ flower paste: to make flowers
modelingpaste: Use to modell
sugarpaste/fondant: To cower cakes. This is an fantastic recepy. Ask if you do not understand God luck.

Warning. This website is highly addictive!

For my flowers I use gumpaste. It is cheaper if you make your own. Two or so recipes on youtube.

I am sure you will get answers to your other questions soon. Welcome!

Welcome to CC! There are many members here from the UK and AU so those of us in the USA have learned a lot of new words from them. As has been stated, probably your "flowerpaste" is our "gumpaste". It is used here for making delicate petals and such. It dries very hard. I think your "Sugarpaste" is our rolled "fondant". You can find recipes onlinefor both; it is much cheaper if you make it yourself.

Hullo and welcome, I'm in the UK and might (!) be able to help a bit -

here in the UK we call what we cover cakes in sugarpaste or rolled/ready to roll icing whilst in the US they call it fondant (in the UK fondant would be the runny icing Mr Kipling coats fondant fancies in!). So the fondant icing sugar your talking about would make the runny fondant icing that you'd put on fondant fancies and not the icing you'd cover a birthday cake in. You can make your own sugarpaste but to be honest I haven't tried it myself I normally buy Regalice online and get on with it much better than Tesco/Asda/Dr Oetker icing.

Flowerpaste is a different beast entirely, its used for making flowers mainly (hence the name) and dries solid and can be quite brittle and is best if its used for items that aren't going to be eaten. I've only recently started using it and its very different to sugarpaste, you can roll it much thinner and it dries incredibly quickly but does produce lovely flowers. I've brought it online for just over £4 for a small pack (you can buy it on ebay for around that too) and again you can make your own but I've not tried yet.

If you want to make models etc I would suggest adding CMC powder (they call is Tylose in some places too) which helps it become less sticky, more elastic and it sets harder than sugarpaste does too.

I hope that's helpful!

Thank you emma_123.

So for cake decorating I just need to buy the regular "ready to roll" icing you see everywhere, which is sugarpaste icing. SilverSpoon have done me well with my baking in the past so I'm going to give them first go at decorating.

I've found 200g flowerpaste online for £4. And I'm guessing I'll only use this for special occasions - I'll probably decorate my cupcakes with sprinkles or shapes made from sugarpaste icing.


I think the book tried to cover every possibility in terms of terminology and it just got confusing.

Yup you want the ready-to-roll icing like Silver Spoon make. I really wouldn't buy flowerpaste until you want to make flowers and I wouldn't put it on top of cupcakes either as it wouldn't be very nice to eat, technically it is edible but its rock hard and doesn't smell nice so I doubt it would taste it!

When I started out I had a book from Carol Deacon and she is great for beginners, explains things really well and has lots of photos showing you things step-by-step so maybe it might be worth getting another book which is aimed more at beginners? I bet once you've had a bit of practice your book will be very useful though, it sounds like it has lots of information in it even if it seems a bit confusing to you now!

I feel like such a dummy! The book I have IS aimed at beginners - but I do find it confusing. There are so many names for things, and searching the internet just gives me conflicting advice - not this forum but the internet in general. I knew the flowerpaste shouldn't be eaten at least!!

I'm honestly not an idiot - but Baking is a practical skill and you only really know from doing. So as a beginner I'm basically Homer Simpson - drooling at pretty pictures! LOL

I havent' baked cupcakes for a long time, so...

I think I'm going to start with some sugar cookies or semolina biscuits and ice them. I've baked biscuits many times so I'm ok with that part. Just have to figure out how to make the right icing, colour it and try to pipe it on. I know piping is hard and needs practice, but I'll never know if I don't try!

As for the icing, I haven't decided whether I'm going to get icing sugar and mix it myself or water down some ready made stuff (if thats possible...)

Sorry me again (am trying to avoid doing work in the kitchen!) - I use those squeezy bottles for icing biscuits (look up for flood icing tutorials too there are several online and really helped me when I started decorating biscuits) and normal nozzles not the ones that come with the bottles. Also, I do sometimes use the royal icing powder you buy rather than making my own royal icing with dried eggwhites and I've not had much trouble with it and its easy to mix, just remember not too add too much water. Its best to use royal icing as it sets hard (using normal icing sugar and water wouldn't set as hard). Hope that helps!

Yes thanks for your help emma

I knew I'd have to buy royal icing to just add water, or use regular icing sugar mixed with egg whites. The book I have has a great section on piping outlines and then flooding to fill the outline.

I guess I'll just have to go to the supermarket tomorrow and see what I can pick up to decorate my biscuits with.

Eventually I want to be able to do nice cupcakes for summer BBQ parties, and maybe even ice my own birthday cakes. Eventually! I've got the actual baking down ok - its just decorating thats confusing. So at least I'm not a total loss!

I'm in Ireland and find that Tesco fondant is great value, tastes ok and is easy to use. I used a pre coloured black fondant once, think it was regalice, and it tasted gross.

YouTube is a great help as there are video tutorials for just about everything.

You will learn lots by reading threads & looking at tutorials here too.

Good luck

Sorry to hijack thread with my own questions but....

Have been wondering the same thing so cheers for starting this one!

Am going to make my own flower/toppers for my cupcakes, kinda biggish gerberas....was thinking to not go with flowerpaste as itll be hard and not good to taste. So was thinking of Regalice - white, but colouring some yellow - is this a pain/hard or relatively easy to do?

Am loathed to buy yellow and white as I doubt Ill use it all.

Thanks in advance.

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I don't buy coloured fondant as it's so easy to turn white fondant into whatever colour you want. You will need to buy colour pastes rather than the bottles of liquid colour you would use to colour royal icing. ;You should be able to buy them in any half decent cake decorating shop. You just knead a little bit into the white fondant until you get the colour you want.

Start with just the tip of a toothpick covered in colour, you can always add more but you can't take it out once you've added it!

You can also dust white fondant flowers with coloured powders/lustre dust to add a hint of colour / pearlesence.

Hope that helps. Again, youtube is a wonderful resource try
http://www.youtube.com/sweetwiseinc for starters.

Huge help, thanks so much

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