Hi there! I need some help with gumpaste. I just tried making gum paste roses this week for the first time. I used the Wilton gumpaste mix and followed directions on the package.
I made the roses on a toothpick (as instructed in the wilton class). They originally looked fairly nice. Except, two hours later, they were sagging and drooping, and I had to throw them all out!!! They just wouldn't stand up!! I would love to know what went wrong!!
It happened to be a very rainy, humid day when I made them. Other than that, I am not sure what I need to do to fix the problems. I really want to try gumpaste!!
Wish I could help you. I had the same problem. Did you let the center dry first before you attached the rest? I think I have read that this will help. Maybe someone with experience will have some suggestions.
Good luck
It's probably the humidity. Gumpaste needs a warm dry place to set as it must dry out to become rigid. Any moisture in the air can cause the paste to droop
Hi, I do my centers on wire, set up a cooling rack so they are high enough, make a little hook, and dry them upside down. Wait until they dry to start attching petals, and use water sparingly!
When I make them on toothpicks, First I make all the centers and let them dry overnight. Then I get the nut cups( the ruffled kind) you know the little cups that people put chocolate truffles in.Make a hole in the middle of the cup so the toothpick will go through. I then do all the 3 petal row on all the centers.I let thost dry for a couple of hours. then do next row,let dry, then do last row.With each row the ruffled cup keeps them from drooping.You just push the cup up to the petals. I have a cake dummy I ust to stick them in.I can fit about 40 roses on the dummy.Hope that helps.
It was noted that during wet season,omit glycerine from your ingredients for making gum paste,it does"t allow your paste to dry well.What is your view about this?. You do need to allow drying time. I use Royal glue, one teaspoon meringue powder to 1 tsp. water and brush this on the toothpick before putting the centre bud on. Then I allow these buds to dry overnight. Then I do one row of petals and allow these to dry overnight, basically let each row of petals set up and dry for about 8 hours. I use a big slab of styrofoam, comes in 4 foot by 8 foot sheets, get it at Home Depot or stores like that, it is styrofoam insulation. I cut it to more managable sizes, wash it off. I put it over a large pot and hang my roses at various angles, some upside down over the centre of the pot. Or I put a pot or pedestal under the edges and weigh it down with something heavy and hang the roses upside down from the underneath. You need your flowers upside down or almost upside down to stop the petals from drooping.
If you have ceiling hooks or a pot rack, you could place a cookie cooling grid rack under your styrofoam and suspend it from the celing using hooks and chain. You then insert the toothpicked roses through the centre of each square in the grid.
Or you can dry roses in the tiny muffin tins. or with something wrapped around them to keep their shape.
Hugs Squirrelly Cakes
Thank you again for all of the fantastic advice...I will certainly dry hanging them upside down from a cooling rack. I think my mistake was not letting them dry before attaching the petals. By the way, how much do you charge for a cake with gum paste flowers??
Not enough, hahah! Sorry I am not much help on that one at all. I know a lot of folks charge anywhere from $1.00 to $3.50 and more per flower. I tend to add the cost of the gumpaste or fondant ingredients in. most of us charge cake prices by multiplying the costs times three. But I find, you can spend weeks making these flowers, so that isn't realistic. I would think the best bet would be to charge your regular prices and add on a premium for these flowers.
I just did one with my youngest, I baked the cakes and made the icing and the fondant daisies and the cake stand base, she flat iced and puts the dots on the cake. It was an 8, 10 and 12 inch three tiered stacked cake. Daughter underquoted the price, she charged $220. I would have charged about $300-$400. There were 54 daisies. Daisies are less time consuming than roses.
Hugs Squirrelly Cakes
squirrely!! That cake is so beautiful!! The daisies look absolutely real!! I wish I would have seen this cake before my wedding.........my entire theme was daisies! I ended up using real daisies on my cake (you can see it on my uploaded pics), but I would have loved to do the gumpaste!! How long did it take you to make all of them? I just took advantage of my 40% off coupon at Joann fabric, and bought the gumpaste book and set. It doesn't look so hard, just time consuming. How long have you been doing the flowers, and do you have any other photos of them??-
Thanks you. It took me 20 hours to make 72. I have never made daisies in gumpaste/fondant before. I only had the Wilton cutters that come with the 32 cutters and the book. The cutter is too small to make the actual daisy size, so I had to roll it out really thick to get a bigger daisy size, cut it and then thin out the petals. Unfortunately that results in wider petals, I have to look into a better cutter size. I had a bunch of real daisies handy to try to duplicate, I always do that when making flowers. I used the end of a fur tip to get the indentations and I made the centres from yellow fondant and used light green lustre dusts on them. I pearlized the white areas, which took some time. I also shaped little foil cups to dry them in to get the natural shape. I was trying to make them all a bit different because usually flowers are all slightly different.
Haha, the kicker is, I don't like daisies, so it was really hard for me to get into this cake, haha!
Hugs Squirrelly Cakes
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%