So anyone that knows me, knows my love of butterflies. I have experimented with many different types of butterflies to adorn my edible creations. When I first began decorating I sampled with making little gumpaste butterflies, perfects for cakes and for cupcakes.These are made using the PME plunger cutters and come in 3 different sizes. So simple to use even my kids love to make butterflies. Also very fun to decorate. They look beautiful with just a little lustre dust brushed on or they can be hand painted for a more colorful look, or using my favorite toy and airbrushing them!!
As much as I love my plunger cutters I looked for a more intricate butterfly to create and found Butterfly Patchwork cutters. These butterflies are so detailed and simply beautiful. My only complaint is I find that the gumpaste needs to be rolled extremely thin and I quite often have to cut them out to get my finished piece. Not something I would use for a large order but I love how they turn out. These ones are dusted with two tones of lustre dust.
So still not quite getting my butterfly fix I set out to create a more life like butterfly for my cakes and decided to try printing edible butterflies...which turned out very colorful and life like, however on frosting sheets they did not hold up as well as I would have liked...so my thoughts turned to trying them using wafer paper instead of frosting sheets. Wafer paper is also know as rice paper and I bet you will never guess what it is made from.....nope not rice..but potato starch, water and a little bit of oil. It is completely edible (although not much flavor) and used quite often in cake decorating. I googled various butterfly images and came up with a few to try and loved my results. This is an Easter cake that I made for a customer. I have since had fun making these little beauties and created various styles and colors all available for purchase and I can make custom orders too!! Visit my etsy shop.
Just when I thought the perfect butterfly cake embellishment had been created I stumbled upon, while shopping at my favorite cake supply store Flour Confections , gelatin veiners. These veiners not only included butterflies but also dragon flies, flowers and leaves. Had to have it!! So I purchased to varying sizes of butterfly veiners (which also included the dragon fly veiners!!) A little time consuming but worth every minute. I had this cake on display at a wedding show and almost ever visitor to my booth were amazed that these were handmade. Notice the adorable little dragonfly perched on the orchids...ahhh dragonflies..but they are another day!