Gumpaste calla lilies were one of the most common flowers that I made to use on wedding cakes.
It’s a pretty easy flower to make, and they’re also easy to make without wires, which is good because that means they’re completely food-safe.
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Materials you’ll need to make the callas:
- Gumpaste
- Calla cutter
- Rolling pin or pasta roller
- Ball tool
- Calla former
- Water or gum glue
If you don’t have a calla cutter, you can use this template as a pattern to cut them out using an exacto knife:
I had a lot of gumpaste callas to make the other day, so here’s the process:
Roll out gumpaste to a 4 or 5 on a pasta machine and cut out the callas using a calla cutter.
If you’re rolling them by hand, you can leave the gumpaste about 1/8″ thick.
You can also use the cutter that comes with the former you’ll use later, but I like the shape of this one better.
Thin out the edge using a ball tool. I like the ones that are made for polymer clay because they’re more solid than the ones they sell for cake decorating.
Shape the gumpaste calla lily.
Wrap the flower around the calla former, with the pointy end down.
If you can’t find the plastic formers, you can use small styrofoam cones from the floral decorating section in craft stores, or even buy some pointy ice cream cones and wrap them with wax paper to use as a former.
Overlap the two edges and pinch the base so that there’s a thicker area of gumpaste to hold it on the cone.
You might have to use a little gum glue to stick the sides together but you might not, depending on how soft the gumpaste is.
Curl the edges of the flower out and the tip up from the cone.
Look at a picture of a real bouquet of calla lilies to see how much you want to curl them.
Let them dry on the formers for a day or two until you can EASILY slide them off of the cones.
Remove them by twisting them gently and pulling at the same time.
If they don’t want to move, don’t force them or they might crack. Let them dry a little longer.
Add the centers.
For the centers, make little sausages of gumpaste and let them dry while the flowers are drying.
You can make these with white or yellow gumpaste, or if you want to do a non-realistic calla that matches the color scheme of the wedding, you can make them a different color completely.
I’ve done a lot of wedding cakes that had silver or gold calla centers, since that’s a good way to incorporate non-edible metallics into the cake design.
To attach the centers to the flowers, use some royal icing or watered-down gumpaste glue as to attach them inside the flower cone.
If you want to add some color to the inner part of the flower, you can dust them with petal dust before attaching the centers.
Super simple, and with these there are no wires to worry about sticking into a cake, so you can just insert the pointy end of the flower directly into the cake.
When these are dried, you can store them in a dry area until you need them, but if it’s too humid they can soften up, so be careful!
