When you’re decorating your gingerbread house, it’s the little touches that make it more fun for the people who are looking at it later.
Doing landscaping and adding miniature details will also let you add a level of creativity in the design that goes beyond the house itself,
I decided to make some edible candy flower pots for my gingerbread house using peanut butter cups, two different types of candy, and a miniature flower mold.
Here’s how I did it, with some things to look out for as far as humidity goes!
To make miniature edible candy flower pots, you’ll need:
- Mini peanut butter cups (leave them wrapped in the foil if you like.)
- Taffy, Starburst candy, or another type of moldable candy if you live in a dry climate.
- Hard candy to melt, chocolate, or rolled fondant cake decorating icing if you live in a humid climate.
- A mini flower mold.
- Silicone cupcake liner to melt the candy in the microwave if you’re not hand-molding the flowers.
Be sure to adjust the type of candy that you’re using to make the flowers, depending on your climate.
Sugar attracts moisture, so if it’s humid the candy flowers will soften and lose their molded details.
If you live somewhere humid, you should use fondant from the cake decorating supply section of the craft store, chocolate, or hard candy that’s been melted and poured into the molds.
These will stand up to humidity better over time.
The molded flowers method.
Start with a mini peanut butter cup, and leave it wrapped if you want to.
I always leave mine wrapped because it adds a little color, and it also makes it easier to eat it later!
If you’re in a dry climate, you can use salt water taffy or another type of taffy-type candy.
If you’re in a humid environment, you’d be better off using chocolate, melted hard candy, or melted gummy candy so that the finished flowers won’t soften up.
For this tutorial I used salt water taffy, and it was REALLY sticky.
It also softened up and the molded flowers lost their shape after a while, so if you’re not sure about your environment, you can use rolled fondant to make the flowers, or follow the second part of this tutorial to melt some chocolate or hard candies. Those will stand up to humidity better!
For a general all-purpose edible material that will work in both dry and humid climates, fondant is a good choice!
Pinch off a tiny piece of the taffy or fondant, and roll it into a small ball.
If it feels really sticky at room temperature, your air might be too humid to let the flowers keep their molded shapes, so try a few and let them sit for an hour or so to test them!
Press the ball of candy into the flower mold.
I used this flower mold from my cake decorating shop, but any silicone flower mold will work:
Make a whole bunch of flowers, having extras is fine.
Put them on the counter or on a silicone mat, but not on parchment or waxed paper that can stick to them!
Use fondant or taffy to make little leaf shapes and place them around the edge of the peanut butter cup.
Start putting the flowers on the green leaves. If they won’t stick you might need to add some icing on the peanut butter cup to get them to stick on.
You can also add a small ball of more green candy to the center to create a raised dome that the flowers can stick to. That will make it look fuller when you add more flowers.
Just a side note here…The taffy that I used for the original flowers ended up melting into blobs!!! Soft taffy is easy to mold but it’s not designed to stay firm, so be careful if you want to use it! It should be REALLY dry where you are, otherwise use fondant or another kind of candy!
Here’s the finished flower pot…
It’s cute now, but it was humid enough where I am today that it softened up and the flowers lost the details! However, I have another way to make the flowers with the mold using Starburst candy that I tried next, and those flowers are holding up fine.
Melted candy method.
For the melted candy method, you can use candy that’s less sticky to begin with, like Starbursts, Tootsie rolls, gummy bears, or even regular chocolate.
I use a silicone cupcake liner for this because you can bend the liner to make a little spout, and they clean up quickly when the candy cools off inside of them.
I also use these liners to make isomalt jewels for the same reason. It’s easy to pour the hot sugar out and cleanup is quick.
I used a Starburst candy for this, microwaving it on high for 15 seconds, then for another 5 seconds until it was totally melted.
You need to be careful not to burn it, so using short bursts on high is safest.
If the candy is really liquid, you might be able to use a spatula to put it in the mold, but it can cool off quickly and stick to the spatula.
Use scissors to cut any strings that form or it can get pulled out of the mold!
When the candy cools off a little you’ll have a short time (about 1 minute) where you can form a little ball of candy to press into the mold.
Be careful with this, because it can go from hot enough to burn you to too cold to mold fairly quickly!
Press the candy into the mold and let it cool off.
It shouldn’t take very long, you should be able to unmold the flowers pretty quickly.
These flowers will hold their shape in humidity better than flowers made from stickier candy.
Basically, if it’s sticky to begin with, it’s softer and will probably end up softening up faster.
I stuck these to the top of the taffy flowers.
Which was good, because I came back a few hours later and the taffy had melted, but the Starburst were still fine. Sugar is no match for humidity!
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