I found some patchwork cutters at a local cake supply store. They are cute butterflies, bees and bugs.

1. Can I use them to make fondant cutouts or do I need to use gumpaste?

2. How thin do I need to roll it?

3. Do you cut out the design with it like using a cookie cutter or do you emboss it then cut out the design with a knife or something? This probably goes back to the other questions of how thin.

I have not found any books locally and I would like to try to make a few butterflies for a cake I am doing this week.
I am signed up for a class on Nov. 1 and 2 but I do not think the class will have enough people signed up and that does not help me right now anyway. If the class gets cancelled I will probably order a book online to see if I can figure out more that way.

Thanks,
Cindy

You can use fondant but it can't be rolled as thin as gumpaste andyou need to dust with icing sugar as opposed to greasing and this can affect the amount of detail the cutter embosses so gum paste is best if you can get it.

The thinner you can roll this the clearer it will be. As gum paste can be rolled thinner this is what I use. I roll it out so I can see through it.
Lightly grease the cutter with a little crisco. When cutting out run your finger over the cutter, pressing quite heavily around the outside edge.

Remove the cutter then remove the excess paste. It will pull away quite easily.You can leave the piece to dry where it is or lift using a crank handled pallatte knife. If the piece seperates when lifting it don't worry just stick it together on your cake and you'll never be able to tell

Another suggestion which is the method I mostly use is to cover the cake in fondant. Use the cutter to emboss where you want the design to go. You caneither paint using lustre dust or what I do is to cut the individual bits of the design in their respective colours and I ues a little water to attach them to where I have embossed.

Hope this answered your questions. Please feel free to pm me if you have any questions and I hope you have fun with your cutters

Michelle

Thank you for the information. I tried a few test butterflies with some fondant I had last night. Because it was really too thin for fondant they were a little difficult to handle but they still looked pretty cute.

It was enough to get me really excited about the cutters because I love the embossing detail that it gives you.

I have some gumpaste mix but I have not tried it yet. I will give it a go tonight. That is also a good idea about just embossing the fondant.

I will let you know how it turns out.

Cindy

MissBaritone,

Can you tell me what type of material the patchwork cutters are made of? They look like they are plastic but I can't really tell from the pictures. Do they hold their shape pretty well? I've never used them before but they look interesting. Thanks for all the information!

bikegal

They're made of a tough hardwearing plastic. I find them excellent. I've had some of mine several years and i've never had to replace any of them