How To Make Hydrangea Flowers And Crackled Fondant

I’ve decided to write this tutorial on how to make hydrangea flowers with sugar and how to make crackled fondant for a beautiful rustic effect.

I have to confess that I used to make a lot of different sugar flowers, like orchids, but every time I resume the hard work of making petals and flowers, I fall in love with them again. There’re only a few days left for Spring, my favourite season. Trees start to blossom, small leaves and flowers appear and fauna and flora wake up after Winter’s dormant period. If you dedicate yourself to cake decorating, this tutorial should be very useful for decorating your shop windows and offering new fondant cakes with sugar hydrangeas.

MATERIALS NEEDED FOR MAKING HYDRANGEA FLOWERS

• 40gr of white Flower & Modelling Paste by Renshaw
• ProGel colorants: Purple and Navy Blue
• Rainbow Dust Colours: Burgundy
• Varnish spray
• Edible glue
• Maizena (cornstarch)
• Fondant rolling pin (small)
• Wadding
• White wire (gauge 26)
• X-acto knife
• Flower foam pad
• Metallic ball tool
• Small piece of porexpan

STEP BY STEP

1. Colour 30gr of Renshaw’s Flower & Modelling Paste with a mixture of Purple and Navy Blue colorant. You need to get a soft base tone, be careful not to get an intense colour. It’s really important to previously colour the paste before shading it powder colorants.

2. In order to create a hyper realistic sugar hydrangea bouquet, I’ve decided to use Simply Nature cutting set and texturizer from Sugar Delites. This sugar hydrangea is a more elaborated flower than the ones we usually find in bouquets. Each flower consists of a central part and flour fine petals.

3. Stretch a bit of the flower paste until it’s 1mm thick. You can use some cornstarch to keep the paste from sticking to your working surface.

4. Cut four equally sized petals with a cutter.

5. Next, stretch the edges of the petal using a small rolling pin, keeping the thickness in the centre. Recut the petal with the same cutter. This way, we’ll make sure that the edges of the petal are really thin and we’ll keep them from deforming when we work the petal with the rolling pin.

6. Cut a white wire, gauge 26, in four equal parts. Moisten the wire with some edible glue and then remove any excess of humidity.

7. Carefully prick the wire in the petal. You can do it grabbing the petal with your thumb and index finger. That way you’ll note how the wire gets in. Put the sugar petal on a flower foam paf and sharpen the edges with a metal ball tool. It’s important that the tool touches the foam pad at all times.

8. Put the petal on the texturizer and press hard in order to mark all the ribbs. Remove the texturizer carefully. If the petal sticks to the silicone, dust some cornstarch on the petal, never on the mould.

9. Let the petal dry for 24 hours (depending on the climate) on some wadding for it to get an irregular shape.

10. For the centre of the flower, make a ball of the size of a rice grain with white paste.

11. Cut a white wire, gauge 26, in four parts. Moisten it with edible glue and prick it to the ball. Pinch the lower part of the ball for it to stick to the wire and form a teardrop shape.

12. With the help of an X-acto knife, make a cross. You’ll have to make one centre for every four petals. Let dry for 24 hours.

ASSEMBLE THE SUGAR HYDRANGEAS

1. After 24 hours, assemble the sugar hydrangeas. First of all, fold all the wires in a 45º angle.

2. Take one centre and two petals. Take note of their position. You must place each petal with a lateral upwards and a lateral downwards. Put a bit of flower tape on the upper part of the wire only, in order to fix the first pair of sugar petals.

3. Put the other pair of petals in the same way we put the first two and cover the whole wire with flower tape. Repeat the whole process with the rest of the flowers. I’ve made 13 flowers for this bouquet.

4. Fold the wire of all the sugar hydrangeas.

5. Make groups of 4 flowers and join all the wires with tape. Repeat the process twice and get three equal branches. Join them together in order to get a big hydrangea bouquet.

6. Shade the flower with a big brush. That way, the colour will spread unevenly and you’ll get a natural effect. Use the Burgundy Rainbow Dust colour.

7. Finally, varnish the whole bouquet with the spray so that the powder colorant enters the ribs of the petal. You can get this same effect with steam.

HOW TO COVER THE CAKE WITH CRACKLED FONDANT

Material list

• 400 gr of light grey fondant
• 1 sheet of thick wafer paper
• Water
• Maizena (cornstarch)
• Fondant rolling pin (big)
• Brush

How to make a cake with crackled fondant

1. Stretch a fondant rectangle until it’s 6mm thick. You mustn’t get it very thin, as you would not be able to crackle it. Apply some water with a brush.

2. Stick a thick wafer paper sheet on it. Make sure that the sheet stays really glued. Brush some water on the wafer paper. You must make sure that the wafer paper gets really soft, otherwise it won’t break well and the fondant won’t crackle.

3. Wait a few minutes and stretch the fondant with a big rolling pin. While stretching it, the wafer paper will get thinner and a few cracks will appear. Stop stretching when you get the preferred crackled effect. Let dry.

4. Meanwhile, you can cover the top of the cake. Stretch some grey fondant and glue it. Cut the excess of fondant with the help of an X-acto knife.

5. Once the sheet of fondant and wafer paper is dry, cut 4 panels of the size of the cake. Be careful when measuring, as you should make 2 panels of the exactly same size of the cake and 2 bigger panels (you should count with an extra lateral thickness, resulting of the fondant covering). Brush some edible glue on the fondant.

6. Glue the fondant panels making sure it sticks properly.

7. Prick the hydrangea bouquet in the upper-right corner. To facilitate the assembling, you can make some bobby pins with flower wire to help you hold the bouquet.

8. Shade the crackled fondant with some Burgundy Rainbow Dust.

HYDRANGEA AND CRACKLED FONDANT: FINAL RESULT

This is the final result of the sugar hydrangea with crackled fondant. What do you think?

Have you ever made a cake with crackled fondant?

I hope this tutorial on how to make a sugar hydrangea and a crackled fondant cake inspires you to keep experimenting in the world of cake decorating. You can also check my sugar orchids tutorial or my fondant cactus tutorial. If you hace any doubts, don’t hesitate to leave a comment and I’ll reply asap. Thanks for visiting!