Flower Fairy

My kitchen has been in a state of chaos again for the past couple of days. I wasn't supposed to mention the renovations again until it was all done, but man-oh-man, it is taking a long time getting there. Anyway - the past two days it has been in the hands of the cabinetmaker and the electricians again, and we are looking at the final stages. I can't quite believe it, to be honest!

So I haven't been able to do any baking (going to have to do some serious catch up in the next couple of days!), but I did find a quiet corner to make this little flower fairy.

She is made out of modelling paste. The flower she's sitting in and her wings are tylose paste.

Tylose powder is an edible chemical called carboxymethylcellulose - CMC. It is a modified form of cellulose which is found in plants. 

Here's the recipe for tylose paste, if you haven't seen it before.

Tylose Paste

Ingredients: 
1 egg white (large egg) 
Approx 2 cups sifted icing sugar
2 level tsps tylose powder (from baking supply stores)
Holsum (white veg fat - find it by the butter and margarine in the supermarket) 

In a small bowl, break up the egg white with a fork.
Add 1 cup sifted icing sugar. 
Mix well. The consistency will be runny.
Sprinkle the tylose on top of this, add 1/2 cup icing sugar. Mix well with a fork. Slowly add more icing sugar until the paste is too stiff to mix with the fork 
Turn onto a surface sprinkled with icing sugar.
Rub some Holsum onto your hands, and knead the paste until non-sticky, adding icing sugar as needed.
Knead until smooth, and non-sticky.
Divide it into 2 balls and store in small plastic bags, or cling-wrap. Then store these bags in an air-tight container. (Not in the fridge). 

Tylose paste dries quickly when exposed to air, so make sure to keep it wrapped. If it does develop a crusty edge, just cut that away - you can still work with the un-crusted paste. 

Colour it with gel or powdered food colouring. 
You can work with it immediately, not maturing time necessary. 
Decorations made with tylose paste take anything from an hour to a day to dry completely, depending on the humidity. 

You can make modelling paste by adding tylose powder to fondant/ plastic icing. The official figure is 1tsp / 250g of fondant - but I just do it by feel. You don't want to use too little, because then your figures suffer the effects of gravity a little harshly, and too much tylose powder will make your modelling paste too stiff and liable to crack. 

Happy creating!

xxM