Video: Petal Paste Techniques

In this short video, Kim Patino of Coffee and Cakes in Frodsham demonstrates some petal paste techniques when cake decorating.

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Kim Patino of Coffee and Cakes in Frodsham and on behalf of CakeBaker.co.uk I am going to demonstrate how to make sugar flowers to decorate cakes.

You need to buy, from any good, standard sugar craft shop, sugar florist paste. What you need to use to start with is a bud on a wire, for roses we use cake wires. So you cut them, make a small hook in one end that just secures the bud, so you do that with them all. You then make enough icing, about the size of a pea, just mould it into a ball and feed the wire through from the flat end down to the hook.

You have two sets of cutters; that's a single rose petal and that's a five petal rose. So for each one of these buds, initially you need two of these. You need a paint brush and some clear alcohol again because again this will evaporate. You don't need a lot, just wet each one. And you have it in the direction of the point and just push it on so that it sticks, fold one side in and then the other side in and then put the join down onto another one and that picks that one up.

With even pressure, push down on all five petals and just move it a little bit - make sure it's cleanly cut all the way round. This is what they call a dog bone tool and you need one of these to make the petals - I always use the wider end, it just gives a better finish on a rose petal than the narrow end, a bit of clear alcohol just a bit in the middle and a bit up each petal.

Take your bud and put it to the middle, you need to just slide it through your fingers then because it needs to come out the bottom, straight through the middle and then you take two petals at once, one that way and overlap and under lap so that that wraps round. And then the other three petals, all three, all the way round and then overlap there. And the same rose, back through the middle, through your fingers. Now, these five all fold round evenly. So if you turn it upside down and overlap each petal onto the next one, and that's that, you just leave that to dry.

To be able to put the green calics at the back you need some standard white petal paste and colour it in green. And then you want a calics cutter, tiny bit of liquid on each one, again not too much because it goes quite soggy. Through the middle, that will pick it up and then just between your finger and thumb thread it up the wire, turn it upside down and with a little bit of pressure attaches it.

You need green stemtechs; you can buy this from any good craft shop or florist. Again there's no exact science, you can just put as many in as you want to.

The final job you need to do on them is you need to steam them that just gets rid of all the excess icing sugar and finishes them off and gives them a nice sheen. I usually use a kettle or you can use a jug of hot water and you hold them over a jug of hot water just for 30 seconds and the steam just takes all the icing sugar off and gives them a nice sheen and you end up with a bunch then that have a nice finish on them. You leave them to dry and then they're ready to use the next day and that gives you a nice bunch of flowers to sit on a cake.