How do I make little icing sugar decorations to put on top of a birthday cake?

[Memoo]

Obviously icing sugar and water but then what else to I have to add to it so that I can form it into different shapes?

Can you tell I've never done this before?

But DD is 12 on Saturday and I really want to make her a cake. i know I can buy ready made decorations but thought it would be nice to have a go at making them myself.

tia

If you are looking at making models etc, you'll be best buying ready made fondant (asda and tesco both sell it) you can even buy it ready coloured these days! What sort of things are you looking at making?

I've not done it myself but I think you need to make a special icing with eggwhite and maybe glycerine. And food colouring.

I just though I'd try and do a few flowers, nothing too fancy. Think I'll take a trip to tesco this afternoon, thanks

I do have some glycerine in the back of the cupboard

I buy the ready made fondant icing and I have some gel colourings which I paint on to the icing - they were a bit more pricy as I bought a box of them in hobbycraft but they last for ages.

You should find instructions of how to make flowers on the internet (I only wish my children's requirements were so simple!)

If you get it ready made, you won't need to add anything. The coloured stuff is a little more resilient than the plain white as it has tylose powder added to it. The white is useable but they don't dry as hard. If you want it for Saturday, you're better starting them this evening, give them time to dry. The coloured stuff comes in a mixed box of red yellow blue green and black (I think lol) but you can combine them, or mix them with white, to make a full rainbow of colours

If you want to do something as delicate as flowers i.e. rose buds then you will need modelling paste for extra strength or even flower paste. To make modelling paste, you need to add something called gum tragacanth into sugar paste/ fondant.

There are some brands of ready to roll icing that contain gum tragacanth, Dr Oetker do one that's coloured.

I think everyone is talking about two different things!

SugarPaste, roll out icing, is all the same thing, you use it to mould things by hand, or roll it out and use cutters to make simple shapes.

OR

Royal icing, which is made with icing sugar, egg white and water. This is used to coat cakes (if you add glycerine) or is used to pipe flowers and decorations (without Glycerine).
I usually only make royal icing with powdered egg white powder, this is because the egg white is pasteurised, and the protein in the egg (the bit you need for the icing to stiffen) is guaranteed. If you can get hold of powdered egg white (most supermakets sell, or your local cake decorating shop). Use 15g of powdered egg white to 455g of icing sugar, mix these together dry - make sure it is mixes really well, then add 85g of water (yes weigh it!), pour it in and beat on a mixer on a slow setting for 10-15 minutes.

Once the icing is nice and thick - consistency of freshly whipped cream, you can put this in a piping bag and pipe simple flowers with the right icing tubes

Hope this helps!

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