Mumsnet Talk

I got a book about decorating cupcakes lately. In it, there's a very simple polka-dot pattern with small sugarpaste circles cut out with a large icing tube, and then rolled on to rolled out a base of sugarpaste.

it's very specific that it's ordinary sugarpaste to be used for this, not modelling paste (which is used for another bit), so it's quite soft.

so i've been trying this, but there's no way that I can get all the little circles picked up off the worktop without them distoring. I don't have a proper palette knife, as I figured that I've have something that would work - but maybe not! I've tried large bread knife, tip of a paring knife, thin piece of stiff plastic from the icing tube package, thin bit of card, toothpick, etc and none of them work. Touching the edge always pushes it in and distorts it, and with circles that small, it really destroys the nice repeat patterns. The worktop has a thin layer of trex, so the paste doesn't stick to it, it's just that I can't start to get it up without squashing it. Would a proper palette knife be any thinner than the things I've already tried?

Or maybe I should leave the paste to dry for a bit, before I try to pick it up. Or use modelling paste? Though I don't know if that would roll as well into the sugarpaste in the end. Also sometimes if they are too dry, they stick to the roller (a plastic 'non-stick' one) rather than embedding in the base sugarpaste.

Last time when I made some letters and numbers for DS cake I rolled sugarpaste on top on baking paper. It was easier to pick them up without braking tiny letters. HTH!

If you've got time, leave them to dry a bit.

thanks, will try that before going out to buy yet another implement!!

Sounds like you need to be rolling the paste out on more cornflour than you're using.