Fondant Berries Tutorial

 

 

 

 

 

 

These fondant berries often serve as fillers for flower bouquets. But more than just acting as a mere filler, they also add a lot of color and beauty to your fondant floral arrangements. They are very easy to make and require a few tools.

 

 

 

 

 

 

TOOLS:

(1) Floral Wires

(2) Floral Tape

(3) Small Flower Petal Cutter (Any type will do)

(4) Paint Brush

EDIBLE COMPONENTS:

(1) Fondant. I use Marshmallow Fondant. Recipe here.

(2) Food Color Paste

(3) Color/Pearl Dust

(4) Water

(5) Shortening (Crisco)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PROCEDURE:

(1) Color your fondant. Though not very important, these berries look best when they are dark in color like an emerald green, royal blue, deep wine, chocolate brown, et cetera.

(2) Roll out spherical shapes with pointed tops to form berries. The size of these berries depends on what you want to do with them. They need not be uniform in size so do not bother weighing them. To make them smooth, rob some shortening on your palms before rolling them out. An easy way of doing this is by dividing your fondant into several small pieces and then going back to shape them into berries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(3) Allow the formed berries to dry for about an hour.

(4) While the berries are drying, cut out floral wires. Do not use very thick wires as they will later on be clustered together. Bend one end of the floral wires into a hook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(5) After an hour the berries should be firm and easy to handle. Insert the hooked end of the floral wires into the base of the berries and leave the berries to dry for about 24 hours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(6) After 24 hours, the berries should be dry. Color fondant green, olive or yellow, roll it out and cut out small petals using your petal cutter.

(7) Apply some water to the base of the berries and insert the petal cutout through the end of the floral wires, wrapping this around the base of the berries. Allow these to dry for about a couple of hours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(8) This step is optional. For better depth of color, you can brush the base of the berries with some color or pearl dust after the petals have dried.

(9) Clustering the berries. Stretch out your floral tape to activate the gluing component. Cut out thicker floral wires which the berries will cluster around. Working with one berry at a time, tie a bunch of berries to the floral wire using the floral tape. What you want to achieve is berries of different sizes in the same cluster. You also want the berries to be of various lengths. The number of berries you cluster in a bunch is up to you. I typically cluster berries in groups of 4, 5 and 6.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(10) Finally spread out the berries to make a full cluster.