Gum Paste Flowers - First Attempt

Look what I made! Gum Paste Flower

This week I decided to start experimenting with gum paste. After much research, I found a recipe I wanted to try. The recipe offered by Wilton on the back of their Gum-Tex container was supposed to be easiest for beginners. This is part of the plan to possibly make my own wedding cake - assuming I can master the art of sugar flowers in the next two years.

However, the dough didn't work out as well as I'd hoped.

Gum Paste Dough

See the picture? Yeah, that's my hard, crumbly, weird smelling dough. I'm not sure what I did wrong, but I definitely intend to try again. I let this dough sit for 24 hours and attempted to use it anyway - it worked well enough for the flower, but was really difficult to roll out and shape.

I'd post the recipe, and the instructions, but then you'd all be as frustrated as me while working with this horrible stuff. I'll follow this post up with my next attempt at gum paste - next time, it will be perfect, and I will start my second career as a fabulous pastry chef .... in Switzerland...