How to Make Gumpaste Plumeria Flowers

I made these gumpaste plumeria flowers for a wedding cake recently. Also known as frangipani flowers, these flowers are often found in tropical countries and make really elegant cake decoration especially for tropical and beach themed cakes.

Gumpaste Plumeria

The first flower took me a bit of time during the petals arranging step but once I got the technique right, the rest of the flowers were quite fast to make. And off course, the flowers need to be completely dry before dusting, so it is best that these flowers are made at least a few days before putting them on the cake.

Plumeria Wedding Cake

Here is how I made the gumpaste plumeria flowers

These are the supplies I used to make the flowers:

Gumpaste - As in any other sugar flowers, gumpaste is the main supply. And my choice of gumpaste is Satin Ice in white.
Petal cutters - I do not have any specific petal cutters for plumeria flowers and used my rose petal cutters in teardrop shape.
Flower formers - these are essential for making plumerias. The formers make it easier to arrange and keep the petals curved and in shape while drying.
Petal dust - Plumeria flowers come in a number of different colors. For this project, I made yellow centred ones, and used Squires Kitchen Marigold food dust color.
Fondant glue - I used the glue to stick the petals. This glue can be easily made with just some CMC and water. Click here to learn how to make fondant glue.
Toothpicks - toothpicks are quite important for these flowers. I found them to be perfect 'tools' to hold the petals in place while they were drying out.

And this is how I made the gumpaste plumeria flowers:

I rolled the gum paste thin. Using my rose petal cutter, I cut out 5 petals.

Next, I thin the edges of each petal. To do this, I use a ball tool and a flower sponge. To make sure the gum paste petals do not dry out, I made these in batches. One batch of 5 petals at one time - from the cutting until the flower is assembled.

The next step is the assembling of the petals. This is a bit tricky and it is important to get it right or it can be quite frustrating.
I started by placing the first petal onto a flower former. The techniques lies in the position of the petal.

As can be seen in the image below (where I am pointing with my needle tool), the pointed end of the petal is not pointing directly to the hole in the flower former, rather, it was placed next to it.

And then the second petal went on. Again, the pointed end should be placed pointing to the side of the hole instead of the center of the hole.

I repeated the process with the third petal.

The same went for the forth petal, but by this time, the petal was overlapping the first petal already.

I gently pushed the pointed end of the forth petal beneath the first petal as shown, and it doing that, made sure the rest of the petals are not displaced.

And then for the final petal, the pointed end of it was positioned beneath the first petal.

Once all the petals had been arranged, I pushed them closer so that the petals are all well positioned.

I then secured the petals in place with fondant glue. I placed a very small touch of glue in the center of the flower, lifting each petal and using just enough glue to stick them all together.

Next step after that was to form the curves on each petal. To do this, I used toothpicks. I used 5 toothpicks for each flower, one for each petal. I placed one toothpick underneath the side edge of each petal so that the petal formed into a slight curve.

I repeated the process for all the 5 petals of the plumeria.

And the final step before setting the flowers to dry is a lightly press in the center of the flower with my ball tool, to make sure the petals are all well attached to one another.

Once the petals were set, I removed the toothpicks.

I left the flowers to dry completely overnight before removing them off the flower formers.

Once the flowers were all dried, I went on with the dusting. Since I was making the yellow centered plumeria flowers, I used Squires Kitchen Marigold dust food color.