I need to make about 20 butterflies, some with wings up, in white with lavender accents for a wedding cake that's due tomorrow. They can be a simple design.

What's the fastest way to do this? I was thinking royal but I don't know if they will dry in time.

Chocolate? Fondant? Gumpaste?

What would you do?

Thanks.

I would do them with colorflow if you can get the Wilton product. They are very easy to do, a thicker colorflow piped around the edge, thinner into the middle, give them some dots if you want, and antennae. They dry nicely, but not crunchy hard, so you can lift them and place them on the cake or on wires, etc. You can do lots of pretty colors too. Good luck!

Rice paper and edible markers - very fast! trace a pattern on the rice paper, color in w/ markers, cut out, place on cake!

I did mine in royal icing and they were done the day before.....you can see them on the cupcakes in my photos. They were perfect. The only trouble I had was the antennaes kept breaking off but that was my fault, I didn't pipe them thick enough.

I would do them with rice paper or choc. transfer (if you want something edible).

ARGH, I don't have rice paper or color flow.

Just for the future, where do you get rice paper?

I guess it would have to be royal or chocolate then.

Does anyone have a pattern?

I would think doing the wings as a choc transfer, let them set up then, prop the wings up on a cotton ball or wedge of wax paper and pipe the center body with candy melts.

Does anyone have a pattern?[/quote


Just "google" butterfly coloring image.
Here's several:
http://images.google.com/images?q=butterfly+coloring+images&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=images&ct=title

Here is a cake Merissa did with them as choc. transfers. It is beautiful!!

http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=278243

I did some with petal paste cut into shape and size then they dry overnight on a w shape cardboard. I used the wilton color mist, but you can just dust them.

i'm thinking gumpaste would be the quickest, roll the bodies, stick the wings in and let them dry over night, you could tint the gumpaste a variety of colors, or dust them, or leave them white, whatever you need.

I think gumpaste or fondant+tylose rolled thin would be fine. I've made butterflies out of straight fondant and they dried in just a few hours. Chocolate transfers would be my second choice. It's still pretty darn hot here, so I avoid chocolate decorations until at least October.

I just did a butterfly cake and I used straight fondant, cut the butterflies, and dried them upside down over the handle of a small paintbrush. I didn't put any bodies on these but they would be really easy to pipe royal icing bodies on top of. They dried in just a couple of hours.

Good luck! Hope you find something that works for you quickly.

Anya

Thanks for all of the replies.

I ended up making them out of chocolate which I colored light and dark lavender to match the bride's colors.

They went pretty fast (well, fast for me) and dried very quickly.

Thanks for everyone's help!

They turned out beautifully! I love the colors and the markings on the wings. You did a great job!


Anya

Thank you!

Projectqueen,

Did you put dried wings into wet piped chocolate bodies? Did you make them off the cake or on? They are beautiful! <<<Cheryl

Yes, first I piped the wings by tracing a coloring page of butterflies. They only took about 5 or 6 minutes to dry.

Then I copied a suggestion from here and piped a blob of chocolate for the body onto a piece of waxed paper that was folded with a center crease and placed in the medium flower former (I NEVER would have thought of that on my own).

Then I just stuck the wings into the chocolate body blob and leaned them against the sides of the flower former. I stuck 2 flower stamens in the top of the blob and the whole thing was dry in about 10 minutes.

To attach them to the cake I used a dab of bc icing under the "body".

Thanks for the compliments, I was surprised (and pleased) at how fast they were.

Thank you! I had so much fun with chocolate animal transfers recently, I can't wait to try butterflies now. Cheryl

i can t wait to try butterfly transfer, yours are beautiful

Made quite a few butterflies so just thought I'd show a few of them
These were made with royal icing


and these with white and milk chocolate, not as sturdy as the ones made with royal icing


To me the easiest route is draw (or copy)an outline on a piece of parchment paper. Fill with either chocolate or royal. Place between folded cardboard or even 2 glasses(just something that can support it) .Let dry. To fasten the drying process i put chocolate ones in the freezer. I na few hours they are ready to be placed where u need them.
I also have step-by-step pics on my website but it's in Russian, if you still want to look at pics you can do it here.