How to Make Petal Dust at Home

Most people love cakes and candies with shiny, lovely, and natural decorations. But imagine if you're already in the kitchen getting ready to make your petal dust cakery only to realize you've run out of your shining ingredient and have no time to get to the store. Here's a quick alternative should you ever need to make edible petal dust on-the-fly.

Working with petal dust can be a bit of a challenge for anyone from DIY bakers to more intermediate cooks. Using edible petal dust takes a creative eye and some patience, depending on your design.

We're going to give a brief overview of what petal dust is and how one can whip up a workable substitute (more on that later) in a bind.

What is Petal Dust?

Petal Dust is an FDA-approved edible ingredient for human consumption used to decorate fondants, gum pastes, and other foods. They can be mixed with alcohol or water for painting decorations or giving dishes a beautiful highlight.

They give more shine, color, and a matte finish for bakers who make cakes and candy. The glitter can consist of a mixture with the following ingredients:

• Titanium dioxide
• Carmine
• Iron dioxide
• Mica

How to make Petal Dust?

Making a good petal dust will depend on your taste and preferences. You can make dusts of any color and amount you may need. These edible glitters are gluten-free and can be made with pantry ingredients. 

Petal Dust Recipe

There is no standard recipe for making an alternative petal dust since you can make them in the desired shades or quantities. As such, the basic tools you will need for it are:

• Food Gel color of your choice
• Powdered sugar
• Coffee grinder
• Storage jar

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to make petal dust:

1. Combine powdered sugar with a few drops of the food gel color of my choice.
2. Mix it in a small container like a coffee grinder or single-serve blender 
3. Adjust color, make sure you have the right desired color shade.
4. Add water to the mixture for try to paint.

The texture and quality won't be what you'd get from Bakell's line of Petal Dusts, but it could be useful as a last-ditch option.

This mixture will depend on the amount of petal dust you want and the color of your choice. Once you find your perfect balance, store it in a small jar for easy transportation.

You can use a dry brush when applying the petal dust for cake decorating or cookie toppers. You can mix it with liquid and paint it as wet.

This mixture will give you at least something to complete your project. Like we said, it's a workable solution should you need it last minute. However, you'll quickly find that your miles may vary depending on the application.

Difference between Petal Dust and Luster Dust

Luster Dust is a powdery substance used to decorate cakes or candy to make them sparkle and glimmer with more shine. Petal Dust is best geared to give your decorations a stronger color on the finished product, resulting in a more defined hue.

Luster Dust has different colors though the most commonly used by bakers are gold and silver. Petal Dusts also come in a variety of colors and will be used differently depending on the project.

Ingredients for Luster Dust depends on the brand, color, etc. but you can typically find them made out of the following items:

• Iron oxide
• Mica
• Carmine
• Titanium
• Chromium Oxide
• Iron blue

Just like petal dust, Luster Dust is good for decorating cakes, candy, desserts, and other treats. But the two will have their own unique results on your bakes.

The Luster Dust gives a slight sparkling effect and a good sheen while adding a subtle color. Petal Dust offers a deep tone finish appropriate for practical details with cake decorations such as gum paste flowers.

Using Bakell's Luster Dust and Petal Dust for decorations

While making your own Petal Dust could suffice, Bakell has tried-and-true recipes to can take your project to the next level.

Our Petal Dust can be used for strong displays of color and toned down to find that perfect shade you're looking for. And if you're after a subtle shimmer to your design, then Luster Dust can help make any project pop.

You can get edible Petal Dust at great prices from our Bakell store. Our Luster Dust offers a lovely shine and color on cakes and crafts. All of our edible glitters are FDA-approved and also Kosher & Halal certified. 

Regardless of your needs, you can shop Bakell's Petal Dusts & Luster Dusts by color and volume to fit your needs.