I had to do some luster dusting of some red fondant pearls last week, right at the same time a question came up on a cake forum about the best way to pearlize colored pearls so that the color didn’t disappear.
I’ve used regular pearl dust on colored pearls before, and it basically changes the color so much they don’t look colored anymore.
(For an article about how to make fondant pearls, click here.)
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So I did three versions of the pearls. First, here they are, undusted:
Here are some with regular pearl dust on them:
Not really red anymore…So I added some red Crystal Color dust to it:
Redder, but kind of speckly. that would work in a pinch, but the best solution was to use colored pearl dust.
This is the Crystallized Pearl from Crystal Colors in red:
That resulted in the best coverage and color, without leaving a speckled look to the pearls.
There are a lot of colored pearl dusts, but the Crystal Colors are FDA compliant for food use, so people can eat them.
There are more varieties of edible pearl dust on Amazon, click here to see those: Edible pearl dust
In the case of fondant pearls that’s helpful, because the pearls are often attached to the sides of the cake tier and are served with the cake.
What if you can’t find a crystallized dust that will give you the color that you’re looking for?
You could make your own luster dust in specific colors by mixing pearl with a matte color. I show how to do that in this article: How to make shiny colored fondant pearls.
