Amaranthus flowers, also called “love lies bleeding” or “flaming fountain” make a beautiful additional to any bridal bouquet. They create a very full and cascading look. The can be used to create gorgeous hanging flower displays, cascading bouquets, grand center pieces that are over flowing, and today we are going to make a sugar version to add this beautiful flower to our cake!
The deep red color of the Amaranthus is perfect for moody fall weddings, woodland inspired designs, romantic fairy tale inspired events, a mid summers night dream tablescrapes and so much more. The gorgeous color and texture makes it stand out and be noticed.
Today I wanted to make a sugar version to accent a semi naked cake with ombre burgundy gum paste roses. After using a tutorial from Pamela to make this black velvet texture cake shown here, 
I knew just how I wanted to create the fuzzy texture of this flower. You can find Pamela Janes tutorial here: http://www.cakewithpamelajane.com/tag/wafer-paper-velvet/
To start off I first made the shapes creating long thin “worms” of burgundy gum paste. I created my color mixing half satin ice Burgundy fondant with half satin ice gum paste. I rolled them out and inserted floral wire through the center. I bent it while still soft to create a flowing look. I also made sure that the “worms” were bumpy. Leaving texture on them as apposed to making them smooth.
I created some that did not have wire in them as well incase I wanted to add one somewhere I couldn’t safely attach the wire.
I left them to dry over night.
I took Icing Images wafer paper and tore it into pieces and placed those inside my blender. A coffee grinder is also great for this. I ground it up into an almost fine powder but still leaving a little texture and small pieces of paper.
Next I added Roxy & Rich color dust in Burgundy and mixed for a second more. I add a little at a time until I had my desired color. Fyi, it doesn’t take much!
I poured the wafer paper powder out on a plate and then I used a little bit of gylecerian to wet the ”wired worms.” I was going to use a spray bottle with a little watered down corn syrup which I believe would work great but alas this day my spray bottle was missing. The glycerin just so happened to be the first thing I saw when I went looking for it and I decided to just use my fingers to rub a little on and then dip into the wafer paper dust.
After I dipped them, I placed the remaining wafer paper back into the mixer and I ground it up a little finer. Then I took the “worms”, which now resemble the Amaranthus, and gently pushed them into the finer powder for an extra coat.
I was amazed at how beautiful the turned out and how easy they were! Check them out on this cake Below!!! They went beautiful with our ombre sugar roses and ferns!
I will definitely be doing more of these in the future! If you need a great cake recipe to use these on, be sure to check out http://ediblesugarart.com/recipe/ultimate-rich-chocolate-cake/
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