This gumpaste lavender tutorial shows you how to make this simple but very pretty adornment for your cakes and bakes.
It can add a wonderful botanical feel to a sugar flower arrangement and is also very handy to have when fresh lavender is out of season to add as a finishing touch to your baking (as well as gumpaste pansies for which you’ll find a tutorial here: gumpaste pansy tutorial).
It’s a simple process to create gumpaste lavender but can be time consuming if you need to make a lot of it due to all the tiny petals required. A small spray to finish a cake however can be created in no time.
Gumpaste Lavender Tutorial: Materials
- Gumpaste
- Purple gel paste color (or violet)
- Rolling pin
- 24-guage green wire
- Small five-petal cutter (half inch/1.5cm or even smaller)
- Edible glue
Gumpaste Lavender Tutorial: How-To
Take a 24-guage wire and cut into 3 pieces. Dip one end into edible glue and wipe the excess off.
Take a tiny piece of gumpaste, roll into a ball and attach to the top of the edible wire and shape as shown below.
Do this for each stem of lavender you require. Work on a few lavender stems at a time so that you’re allowing drying time between stages
Roll out the gumpaste and cut approximately 3-4 petal shapes in the darker color and 3-4 in the lighter color, per stem of lavender.
(In case you’re wondering, there’s no need to thin the petals with a ball tool because lavender petals have a kind of “chunky” look.)
Dab some edible glue in the center of the petals. Take one of the stems and stab the wire in to the center of one of the petals (in a different shade to the gumpaste ball on the wire) and thread up along the wire to the gumpaste ball at the top.
There’s no need to wrap the petal around the top little ball of paste. Just let it hang over it and pinch the underside to secure it to the wire.
Add another one or two petals to the wire (in alternating shades) and then hang upside down to dry.
Do this for each of the stems you require before moving on to the next stage, allowing drying time of 10 minutes or so.
Add an additional two petals to each stem leaving a half inch gap from the first set of petals.
Do this for each stem before adding an additional two to three petals again.
Hang the stems upside down between each stage.
For this gumpaste lavender tutorial, I’ve used two petals per stage and 3-4 petal sets per stem (because this Cake Geek likes all her sugar flowers to be quick and easy!) and I think it looks sufficient, but you can decide yourself if you need extra petal sets.
Optional dusting: Dust the petals with lavender petal dust and the underside of each petal grouping with green dust, if you wish. Then swipe the stems through steam from your kettle to set the dust color.
