What Is Gumpaste? Just Some Basic Newbie Type Questions...
Decorating By amiegirl Updated 1 Mar 2007 , 7:12am by ShirleyW
I can't seem to find any recipes, and I'm not too fond of premade materials. (I tried fondant from a bucket and it was terrible!) What is gumpaste and what is it used for? What are the advantages of it and is there a place here where it would be discussed? I'd appreciate any help, since I'm planning a cake for my 3 year olds birthday and I'd like to really make something nice!
Amie
There are many recipes for fondant, you might like one of them better. When you make it yourself, it is easy to add a flavoring. There are some recipes here and on www.baking911.com
Gumpaste is normally used for decorations and for flower making. There are also several recipes. It isn't normally used to cover a cake.
You might consider candy clay (also called chocolate clay and modeling clay) It is a mixture of melted chocolate and corn syrup. The syrup causes the chocolate/candy to firm up. It can be rolled similar to fondant, but tastes a bit like candy or white chocolate. It can also be flavored with candy flavoring.
Gumpaste is a sugar dough that can be used to mold items or for making lifelike flowers. It rolls out something like fondant, but can be rolled much thinner, ruffled for petals and it dries very hard. The ingredients would be consider edible, but it doesn't taste very good, just sweet and hard as a rock. The flowers made with gumpaste can be colored with dry petal dust colors, or painted with a mixture of petal or luster dusts and an alcohol based liquid, Everclear, Vodka or even lemon extract.
There are many recipes out there, some contain fat such as Crisco, some cornstarch, others Tylose powder or Gum Tragacanth. You kind of need to experiment to find one that works best for you.
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%