How to make unique sugar snowflakes using sugarcraft cutters

Creating unique sugar snowflakes is a wonderfully absorbing and fun activity for a winters afternoon. I love the way dreaming up new variations stretches my creativity and makes me think. After all, we’ve all been led to believe that every snowflake is different, each one a unique crystalline art form. To me, it seems only right that each sugar snowflake should be different too.

Equipment you need:

The most important tools you need are some outline snowflake cutters plus small cutters in various shapes and sizes, to take away shapes from inside and around the snowflakes. You will also need a few basic tools and a foam pad.

The paste you need:

The snowflakes themselves are made from pastillage. This is easy to make yourself. You’ll find details the recipe in my ‘How and when to use pastillage’ blog post. I use pastillage to make my sugar snowflakes for a very good reason, the reason being to prevent them wilting when they stand proud on the cakes. Using pastillage means that I will have crystalline geometric sugar snowflakes that will remain that way, not bend or curl when subjected to a little moisture.

How to make unique sugar snowflakes

Inspired by a short flurry of icy snowflakes, whilst out and about last week, I created this Facebook live video about how to make my unique sugar snowflakes. It’s had a really good response so I hope it inspires and educates you too:

Using sugar snowflakes on cakes

Over the years I’ve made many unique sugar snowflakes and added them to cakes both large and small. For these mini cakes, I baked cakes in the multi mini cake tins that we stock here at Lindy’s Cakes. For tips on using these tins see my blog post ‘Tips for baking mini fruit cakes‘. The cakes I covered in festive coloured sugarpastes to create a contrasting backdrop for the sugar snowflakes. The sugar snowflakes themselves are attached to the cakes using a small dot or two of royal icing. TIP use a dressmakers pin to secure the snowflakes whilst the royal icing dries.

 

You might also spot that I’ve embellished the cakes further by adding a few very subtle hand drawn snowflakes using a large fluid writer and metallic silver airbrush colour.

I hope you feel inspired to make your very own unique sugar snowflakes. Remember all the tools I’ve used are available from us here at Lindy’s Cakes shop.

Sweet wishes
Lindy Smith
“Bringing world class sugarcraft to your kitchen”