Cake decoration and sugarcraft is one vocational craft that evolves on a daily basis. As you go higher in your skills, you’ll find out that you can’t do without gum paste tools.
What’s more; you can give free reins to your imagination with the myriads of gum paste tools that are available today.
From flowers to life like models, there’s no end to what a cake decorator can do with the right tools and ingredients.
Types of Gum Paste Tools
Gum paste tools are cake decorating tools that are used to work on gumpaste, pastillage, fondant and modelling chocolate. With these tools, you can create and sculpt all types of edible artwork on cake.
Gum paste tools can be categorized into many groups. However, there are gum paste tools that fall into all categories. This is because they multi functional and versatile tools.
These categories of gum paste tools include; modeling tools, flower making tools, and decoration tools.
In this write up we shall discuss some of the tools in all three categories.
Modeling Tools
Modelling tools are used for molding characters and figurines which have become a predominant aspect of cake decoration.
In years gone by, modeling was done by hand; even till date cake decorators take pleasure in making their characters by hand. But thankfully, there are now many modeling tools that have been manufactured to help make modeling easier.
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Gum Paste Molds
Gum paste molds are made of plastic, silicone and sometimes metal. They usually have the imprints of flowers, figures, animals and so on.
All you have to do to use them is to prepare your gum paste in the right consistency, and then press it into the mold. You can leave it to set for some minutes or remove immediately; it all depends on the item you are making.
You don’t need too many tools when working with gumpaste molds. You only need a firm surface mat for kneading the gum paste and the gumpaste mold.
Samples of Gumpaste Molds
There are a hundred and one gumpaste molds but we’ll just show you a few so that you’ll catch the drift.
Note that you can also make these molds by yourself; all you need are the right materials and instructions.
Gumpaste Pearl Mold
You can use these to make pearl strands for cake borders, doll costumes and many innovative items of cake decorations.
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Gumpaste Human Figure Molds
Gumpaste human figure molds help you churn out human figures fast and easy instead of spending hours making them.These molds are available for bridal showers, baby showers, and family celebration cakes and other occasions that require human models.
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Gumpaste Cartoon Character Molds
Just like the human figure molds, there are gum paste molds that help you create any cartoon character you can think of. These gum paste cartoon character molds open you up to a whole world of fun cake decoration.
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Gumpaste Flower Mold
There are some cake decoration projects that leave you with little time to make all the lovely decorations you need by hand. Gumpaste flower molds would help you to make hundreds of flowers in a short time.
Although most professional cake decorators would argue that handmade flowers are the best,gumpaste flower molds still come in handy.
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Gum Paste Shape Molds
Shapes give some dimension and details to a cake and they work well for novelty cakes.
Children’s cakes are usually fun when decorated with different shapes. In addition it also helps the kids to learn as they have fun. What’s more; you’ll be able to make uniform shapes with these gum paste shape molds.
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Gum Paste Alphabets and Numerals Mold
This is a time saving tool that helps you create uniform alphabets for messages on cakes. You can even make these alphabets ahead of time and store them.
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Tools for Modeling By Hand
For those who love modeling by hand,you’ll need some gum paste modeling tools to work with. First of all, we want you to know that this list is not an exhaustive list. We present some of these tools in the following segment:-
Bone Modeling Tool
Most bone modeling ball tool has a small and a large tip. It is used in flower making but is also an essential tool in gum paste modeling. You can use it to thin out edges of leaves and petals and also add details to characters or figurines.
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Wheel Tool
Gumpaste wheel tool usually has a quilting wheel tip, a wavy wheel tip and a cutting wheel tip. Each of these tips help you achieve different effects on your gum paste or fondant decoration.
Primarily, you can use the quilting tip to make stitches on gum paste items and secondarily, you can also make other imaginative patterns.
The cutting wheel is used to cut out stripes or ribbons of gum paste while the wavy tip is used to emboss patterns into gum paste decorations.
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Scallop and Comb Gumpaste Tool
Scallop and comb gumpaste tool is a combination tool that helps you to imprint fine seashell details on your cake borders. You can also use the comb end to make serrated patterns on fondant covered cakes.
Some brands make this combination as a shell and knife combo. So instead of the comb on the other end, there’s a knife and you can use it to trim small portions of gum paste or fondant.
Gum Paste Crimpers
Crimpers are gum paste tools that look like tweezers and they come in different sizes and designs. They are used to add different effects to the edges of a fondant covered cake or gum paste decorations. They are additionally useful for securing fondant to a cake board.
Crimpers are only effective on soft sugar dough. This is because using a crimper on dry gum paste or fondant will tear the sugar dough.
Crimpers are quite easy to use; all you have to do is first of all open the crimper and place on the soft sugar dough. Then clamp the two edges close and lift off from the paste. Finally, ensure that you lift off the crimper gently so that you don’t tear out the paste.
You can stick your crimper into corn starch before using it on the paste if you notice that your paste is sticky.
One trick to using cripmers is this; experiment with some spare gum paste or fondant before you use the crimper on the main paste. By so doing, you would know the kind of effect to expect with the different pressure applied to the crimper.
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Gum Paste Embossers
Gum paste embossers are used to imprint different patterns on a fondant covered cake or gum paste decorations. There are different kinds and sizes of embossers. Some embossers can be used to roll out large quantities of sugar dough while others are ideal for small decorations.
This tool helps you to imprint intricate and fine details onto your cake or gum paste fast and easily. Designs such as diamond squares, stars, dots, cobblestones and bricks are easier to achieve with embossers.
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Gum Paste Flower Tools
You need these basic gum paste tools for creation of life like gum paste flowers:
Solid surface board, rolling pin, petal cutters, flower formers, ball tools, veining tools, brushes, flower drying racks , foam pads and the right ingredients.
The ingredients you need are gum paste, corn starch, vegetable shortening and food coloring or petal dust.
We have discussed in details the basic gum paste tools in a flower making kit in a previous article.You can click here to read it.
We also recommend you check out some of other articles and product reviews:-
- Braun HM5100 MultiMix Hand Mixer- Honest Review
- How to Make Fondant Flowers
- Anyana Gum Paste Mold- Brief Review
- How To Make Royal Icing Flowers
- Cake Piping Bags with Tip- No Stress Piping
- Perlli Complete Bakeware Set-Full Review
But in this article, we’ll discuss some of the tools that we didn’t mention then and they include the following:
Cone Gum Paste Tool with Serrated Opposite End
These tools have a cone side and a serrated end. The cone side is used to make the large well in the flower center where you place the stamens and the tip of the bud.
The serrated side is useful for embossing star patterns or to mark the divisions in tubular flowers. You can also use the serrated side to vein petals or add dots to a decoration.
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Flower Leaf Gum Paste Tool
This gum paste tool is used to add details to gum paste flowers and leaves. You can use it like a pen to add details and texture to the surface of your decoration. You can also use it to create wide or thin veins on your gum paste flowers and leaves. The wide curved edge of the larger end is used to frill or round out petals.
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Gum Paste Umbrella Tool
The gum paste umbrella tool is a double ended tool. It is used to add details to the throat of gum paste flowers and the top of flower buds. It can also be used to make petals by pushing the tool into the top of the gum gum paste bud.
The no of petals you get depends on the side of the tool you push into the flower bud. When you push the tool into the bud, you extract it and then shape the petals to the desired effect.
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Gum Paste Blade Tool
This tool allows you to trim gum paste and fondant items with precision. Although you can use ordinary knives to trim your gum paste, this tool gives you precision and is made just for sugar paste.
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Thin and Thick Gum Paste Modeling Sticks
These sticks are multi functional and versatile tools that can be used both to frill petals and also roll out gum paste. When you have those itty bitty gum paste piece, you don’t need to use your 7 or 8 inch rolling pin. The thick end of these sticks would serve just fine. You can also use the sticks to form curved flowers or flower tubes.
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Gum Paste Flower Drying Rack
A gum paste flower drying rack is useful for drying gum paste flowers without them losing their shape. It is especially useful for flowers that are made with florist wires and flowers that shouldn’t lie flat to dry.
This tool comes in different designs but they all perform the primary function of drying gum paste flowers.
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Cake Decoration Tools
The rolling mat and rolling pin are the most basic of all cake decorating tools especially when working with gum paste and fondant.
Rolling Mats
Although there are various sizes and textures of rolling mats,there are two components that they all must possess. First, a rolling mat must be non stick and secondly it must be smooth. These two features ensure that you would roll out your gum paste as thin as possible without it sticking to the surface of the mat.
The smoothness of your paste and rolled out dough depends on the smoothness of the surface of your rolling mat.
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Rolling Pins
Rolling pins also come in different sizes and materials. These materials include plastic , wood, silicone and glass. Each of these materials has its own merits and demerits.
So whatever material you chose to work with, always ensure that you get the best quality.
Most gum paste projects require small size rolling pin; a maximum of 8 inches in length. Unless you are working with a large batch of gum paste at a time, you don’t need a big rolling pin.
The best rolling pins to use for gum paste projects are those that have the measurement rings; you can actually get those measurement rings individually. But most often rolling pins for gum paste or fondant projects come with the measurement rings.
Measurement rings for rolling pins, allow you to roll out the dough to the precise thickness or thinness required. And in working with gum paste this is an important factor that determines the perfection or otherwise of your end product.
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Conclusion
Like we mentioned at the beginning of this piece, there are a wide variety of gum paste tools available in the market today.
There’s no possibility of you owning all the cake decorating tools out there . However, you can always get the ones that are most necessary per time.
We believe that this article has given you a fair idea of the basic tools that you can start out with. So go ahead and shop wisely to get cost effective tools.
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