yisba's kitchen alchemy - sugarpaste

I love to bake and then decorate cakes. But I sometimes get frustrated about not having any sugarpaste, and I resent buying it. It feels a little bit like ‘cheating’ if you are making everything else yourself by hand.

I’ve been trying to find a good, easy to follow recipe to make my own at home. So far, the wise people of the internet claim it is “too hard”, and to “just buy it”. To that I say – go away. Nothing is too hard to make, and with a little time and effort it’s so much more satisfying and rewarding to make your own stuff.

So I finally found a good recipe and made some earlier on. Let me tell you – it was far from hard. In fact it was a piece of sugar paste to make...

Ingredients:

60ml (4 tbsp) cold water
20ml (4 tsp/1 sachet) powdered gelatine (you can use the vegetarian version)
125ml (4 fl oz) liquid glucose
15ml (1 tbsp) glycerine
1kg (2 1/4lb) icing sugar

Method:

1. Put ‘hot from the kettle’ water into a pan. In a big bowl place the cold water and sprinkle over the gelatine. Stand the bowl over the pan of water and stir until the gelatine is dissolved.

2. Measure out the glucose and the glycerine into a measuring jug. Add this to the gelatine and stir until it has blended and the mixture is runny.

3. Sift the icing sugar into another bowl. Take the bowl of gelatine mix out of the pan and put onto the worktop. Sift some of the icing sugar into the gelatine and mix. Keep adding the sugar and mixing until you have a dough in the bowl.

4. There will seem like there’s a lot of sugar there, don’t worry – it’ll all mix in. Set aside your spoon and get your hands into the mixture. Squeeze the dough to combine the liquid ingredients and the sugar. Start to knead it, folding it over and adding more of the sugar that’s in the bowl.

5. At this point you can turn your mixture out onto a sugar dusted surface. Keep kneading until the sugar is combined, and the dough stops feeling sticky and starts feeling smooth and a little springy.

6. Now it is ready for use – either use it to roll out and cover a cake, or make decorations with it. If you want to save it for later, cover in cling film and store. It will keep for a while, it’ll just need another knead when you come to use it.



Don't leave your sugarpaste unwrapped. It will harden and be unworkable. You want it to harden once you have made something with it, but beforehand you are just left with a hard lump of sugar. If you leave some out by accident feel free to eat it though ;)

You can colour and flavour the mix to your heart’s content!

Try making some fondant sweets with the paste, simply cut out shapes of the paste (or roll balls of it) and leave them to harden overnight. You could even dip them in chocolate and sprinkles - yum!



(Disclaimer - just to be clear, this recipe is meant to be fun and tasty. Please enjoy this at your own risk, I cannot take any responsibility for any injury or illness sustained while making or consuming this recipe)