Edible sugar buttons perfect for vintage style cakes

What is the secret of a successful sugarcraft design?  There’s certainly no set formula but design is not just something that catches the eye but also that pulls on the invisible, very personal soul strings of our memory and so it is with buttons.

Buttons are part of our heritage

Do you remember twiddling the buttons on your childhood clothes (perhaps you remember your mother telling you not to!), or sifting through your granny’s button tin like a pirate through treasure?  All the colours of the rainbow, every kind of shape and texture – pearlescent and jet-black, heart-shaped or hexagonal.  Just the very sight of these little design classics always rekindles my love of the retro and the vintage… and I just love how I can take them and re-make them, recreating past times and creating anew.

Edible buttons

Recently I ran a workshop, making this beautiful posy cake out of sugar flowers and buttons.  It certainly created a lot of interest on Facebook! It is making most of the recent trend to make button bouquets. I used both button moulds and flower moulds and arranged them in layers.  The effect is one of buttons and flowers cascading in colour – a real treat for design-lovers!

I have also used buttons many times in the past to make pretty and slightly quirky adornments – as a centrepiece to a flower on ‘Bring out the Bunting’, for example from my Contemporary Cake Decorating Bible

Or on my ‘Patchwork Heart Cake’ and the ‘Butterfly Buttons Bag’, from the same book.  They are an ever-versatile design statement and, even better, there’s a button out there for everybody!

Buying button moulds

2018 update: Be wary of cheap or free moulds! The button moulds I use, the ones we stock in our online shop, were developed in the UK by a company called Alphabet Moulds (now based in Austria). They are manufactured from platinum cured USA/FDA approved food grade silicone. These moulds have been copied and cheap imitations have flooded the market. These inferior products are sometimes not even manufactured from food grade materials! My recommendation is for you buy genuine products from specialist suppliers. By doing so, not only are you supporting the companies who developed the products, you will also know your moulds are safe to use.

Happy sugar button making!

Sweet wishes

Lindy  🙂