Lessons

Lesson Info

Gum Paste Supplies and Basic Shapes

So today we're going to focus on the gum paste flowers but truthfully in gum paste we can also do figurines and that sort of thing and just very quickly I'm going to go over the supplies I'm going to use a pasta machine today's which is going to put my students at a huge disadvantage sorry but if you have when you get work much faster and much cleaner even work but you can also use just a rolling pin and mine's a little sticky is they picked it up also I worked that down and I have two types they have a little metal one this is not this is its protective cover so it's just a little metal one or there's the nonstick plastic one I have wires so we can wire flowers I have cutters and the thing with gum paces you khun by mountains and mountains and mountains of supplies and tools or toys and the cutters is where you're going to do that but I've indicated just a leaf cutter the five pedal cutters and I asked you to get a couple of different sizes and I have several different types out here ...

and then I also brought along a star cutter today that we can use his k licks and some other things but I'm going to show you how to change turn those into some things you do need a ball tool tend you need a phone pad to work on I have what's called the cell pad it has two sides if firmer side is for doing more vain ing work and this is for balling the edge of your tools which are flowers which will talk about and you can also use just a firm pad is fine you don't want to work directly on a hard surface though you want a little foam so you need a ball tool for balling we also have a vein ing tool this is a fainting tool sharp on one edge a little smoother on the other and then I've given my students eh boning tool which I have not bothered to give myself but a boning tool if what do you guys could hold up your boning tool? It looks like a bone that's it and that can also be used as a ball tool now the black tools like they're holding up and our vain or tool are gem tools then the yellow tools and they have a yellow ball tool that is a p m e tool the's air both very high end good tools lines of tools if you have the wilton sets that are green you might work with him for a while but when you get going and you like that's doing this you'll want to invest in a better set of tools because wilton's are a little rough a little hard to work with I also brought along a tear dropped cutter and these air just little metal cutters that aaron a teardrop shape and we use thes for a lot of different flowers and leaves, and I'll show you that I have a little strainer and it's not so I constrain anything it so I can use that little mesh to create centers for flowers, and I've given my students bigger strainers I kind of like the bigger ones because they have more defined texture, but this one doesn't take his much space on my bench, so I brought that one here. I also have some statements that we can use to make centers for flowers, and I have a large decorating tip that we're going to use the back side of as a cutter so you can use all kinds of things, and we can create things with their fingers, and of course we need gum paste, and I have gum pace it's white and I have some that's already colored and gum paste is literally sugar and gum and gelatin and a little short mean and more sugar and some more sugar and a little more sugar, and then we create the gum paste. Um, I also have a nice little spatula to pull things off, and I don't know if you can tell in the camera or not, but I am working on one of my plastic sheets rather than directly on the stainless steel counters when we work on stainless steel gum paste much like our fund in't has a tendency to be very unforgiving so if we have dirt on her hands if we've worked on our counter was something else and it's something got some color stains that's all going to show so I put down a layer of plastic so I don't encounter that and then I also have a couple pieces of that upholstery plastic that I've cut into squares and I'm going to use thes to put my petals in between so that while I'm working they don't dry out because gum paste dries very very quickly and if you don't keep it covered with either a sandwich ziploc bag or a piece of plastic or something, you will not be working with a pedal who will be working with a handful of crumbly stuff okay, so I have that oh and I have a little this is a little knee high stocking that's filled with corn starch we call it a puff so that I can puff a little corn starch we want to be careful about how much corn starch we add to our gun pace because we can dry it out really fast and then I also have ah little container of gum glue my gum glue is made with the gum which is cmc or gum trigg as it's called cmc is the commercial grade dumb trade is a natural grade and I like the cmc it's more consistent and the other thing that I have is a little brush to use that gum trig or the gum glue if you don't have gums where you will have comes if you're making come paste but if you you don't have to make this, you can just use a little water that will work also ok, just a little container of that and I think we're ready to rock and roll you guys ready? Who? Ok, so the first thing I'd like you to do is you can color your paste um let's, I don't have any orange made let's make I'll make a little orange so that you can see how it's done and I want to show you something see how my pace has some pink on it when I either stored it next to something that had pink or wrote on the big in red it's soaked through the bag, which is amazing to me, but it is that sensitive it will pick it up so I'm going to just take a little of this off I'm not throwing that away it's just color on I'm not gonna get all weird or strange about it I get weird and strange about other things and I'm going to go for I want orange in that first one I picked up his peach and I'm just using the pace colors um you guys have a little pot of shortening okay, you need that because again gum paste likes a little shortening sometimes I like how I take really good care of my students and then forget to take care of me oh well so I'm going to end up with orange all over my hands and I'm just going to need that in warm up my gums when I say warm up my guns I'm talking about the gums in the gum paste this is getting a little sticky so here's what I'm going to do that this might happen so I brought him really big big a powdered sugar I won't need all of it just want a little bit then I'll just needing a little powdered sugar if I needed in corn starch that would also keep it from getting sticky but it also dries it out so it will crack so I'm better off meeting in ah little powdered sugar got a pretty orange going here you guys are making orange to pink and if I put a little bit of shortening on my fingers before he started this it would do a couple of things one it would keep the color from soaking into my skin and two it would keep it from sticking to me but it's ok, I'm moving forward, okay? And I'm in it work in the rest of that and you can see how it's starting to stretch. Now see, those got guns were getting warm. Okay, you noticed? I have a question. Is this current started? Thatis corn starch. And can we use this with the come paste? Yes. Now, when you're working with the modeling chocolate, then you use powdered sugar only, but with fondant and gum paste to use corn starch and powdered sugar if you want, but mostly corn starch. Ok, so I've got a nice orange. I want to wash my hands because I do not like donkey hands that's why my wash clothes all look horrible. I'm always cleaning some donkey thing. Ok, let the hands dry just a little bit little corn starch so they don't mess with my fund, my gum paste and what I want to do. I'm going to make an orange rose instead of a pink roses time. So the first thing I want to do once I had this made is I want to make a little center that's a cone shape that I'm going to use for my roses and the reason that, um oh! I said we're going to do this is depending on which cutter I used depends on the size of my cone so this cone or this cutter is very cool. It tells me exactly what size to make the cone. So for this, when I need to make it much larger thiss particular cone that I made is more for this size of cutter. Can you see the difference? This is too small, this one's more appropriate. The other trick that I've learned over the years is that if you give a little point, I've got it it's starting to set up, so if I give it a little point, I get a better rose if it's point here, then if it's um blunt at the end, it sounds it sounds silly shouldn't make any difference, but it seems too so I'm gonna make a couple now the dryer and firmer your centers are, the better it is for you to work and one of the things I've done for my students that have given them all eh center that set up so they'll be able to do one without too much stress and I want to do a couple that are on the small side to go with my tiny cutter, okay that's, even a little too big for that one let's cut that down a little bit so we can have different cutters and you don't have to use these the's cutters, air jam cutters or a good cutter there's also these type of cutters and I think this is this is f mm that's another company out of england these cutter's work these air wilton's a set of wilton's so as long as it's a five pedal cutter I mean you could even be using a cookie cutter it's ok, as long as you've got five petals okay and again, you need to make sure your product is covered when you're not using it because it will get hard as a rock if you don't, so we've got our centers made those air going to set up let's make some centers for calla lilies and I'm going to use yellow which already have made if you want to make your centers out of orange for you, cal a really as you can if you you can make them out of burgundy there's all kinds of color colors of calorie lease now um I did a wedding cake thiss last fall now anyway did a wedding cake last fall where they had oh almost black calla lilies with burgundy they were really quite deep and dark and exquisite, you'll notice might yellow is not warmed up and it kind of broke apart and then once it gets warm it starts to stretch so you need to warm your gums up in the gum pace so it works needs to be needed and one of the ways to get everything the right size or the same size as you roll out a sausage and then you just divide the sausage up into about equal sizes they make this different times for the centers what I have done now calla lilies the center's air kind of heavy the pedals air not heavy or the petal is not heavy but the center's air heavy so I'm using a little heavier gauge wire this is probably about a twenty gauge the lower the number the heavier the wire has to do with how many fit into a bundle it's a standard industry standard for wires and I've got five so take five and here's I've cut them too just a short length they don't need to be very long to be amazing how much you have to cut off and dump anyway while you're putting things together and I've added a little hook on the end with my point nose pliers and then to get these ready I'm just going to dump him into my gum glue tip off the excess wipe him on the back of my hand so that they're just damp but not stopping wet then I'm going to get my little think of gum paste here I'm going to get a plastic bag to keep those from drying out as I'm sitting here because they will, they'll dry out that fast, and then I formed a ball and then I'm going to make it into a cone with a point. Ok, I'll take this hooked, damp end you guys watching the hook dampened, I'm going to just poke it right into the end, the fat end of that cone that I created pinch it around the edge now that hook enables at that center to stay on their not fall off later if you don't hook it when it dries. Sometimes all this fall right off, and then I'm going to give this a little bend and for my calla lily centers, if I want to and get really elaborate and I can brush the's with the glue and I can roll them in a pedal dust, which is a colored meal, I can roll it into a greater and get some texture on it, or keep it simple and just do it plain. I then want to use a styrofoam block and step it into the styrofoam block, so they dry nice and I'll just bet five more times or four more times. How many times you want? The cool thing about calla lilies is there again? They're on array of colors, but they also make great little filler flowers if you're doing a cake. I often will combine gum paste flowers with buttercream flowers on cakes my customers order themis flower job ease we just want a flower job be her favorite color is red she doesn't want any or and even know her birthday's in november ah flower job e with no orange I have kate customers who have been around and with me for years they have literally been around through the birth of children and graduations and all kinds of events in my life plus I've been through many of their events too so there you go beautiful my students are getting it again with the calla lilies now they sell calla lily cutters and I have many of them but in the truth of the matter is they look on awful like a teardrop and you know if you don't have it you don't need to spend the money on it you could do it without it go forward I see yes what does the gum glue do it's a glue attach is so when you put on the top of your chick book then it actually will it's went and it will it gently melts gently or roughly melt sure um sugars in your gum paste in it and when it dries it drives like a glue you can also use raw egg white or the water or vanilla I really try to encourage people not to use the raw egg white it does glue very well but if you have any issues with salmonella in your egg, then you have issues with salmon, ill and your flowers. And the other thing that happens with the egg white is like, if I brush this pedal with egg white, and then I don't attach that egg white to something else, everywhere that I brushed the egg white, none of my destin colors will stick, so you can have kind of a blobby, horrible mess when you're done. Okay? And this is my last one, my last center. And so these air just centers. We just need to have some things set up and start to be ready. Ok? And a lot of gum paste is it's doing something and basically waiting for it to dry until you could move to the next stage.