Easy Finger Flowers

I'm Rachel Souffle, and in this lesson I'm gonna share a really simple, easy flower that you can make just with your fingers. Now I do have a little bit of cornstarch and some water just in case, and I also have a tiny little paring knife, but for the most part, these flowers are just going to be shaped and formed by using our hands. So to get started, I have a little bit of modeling chocolate. You could certainly use gum paste here, but I would not recommend using fondant. It's just too soft and won't hold its shape.

So I'm gonna do a two tone flower and I'm emulating a plumeria, which is a very tropical flower and it's beautiful. It's got 5 petals, and each of those petals splay out from the center and they overlap just a little bit. So it's a really easy flower to make. So the first thing I'm gonna do is roll out my modeling chocolate into a snake, and my secondary color is gonna be also a snake, but much thinner. We just want the edge of our petals here to have a little bit of color.

We don't want the whole petal to have. Uh, the same color, um, you certainly could do it that way. Uh, plumeria, also known as frangipani, uh, depending upon what part of the world you're in, uh, they are a very fragrant flower, and they come in a variety of color combinations, so. You really could do this flower in any color and it's probably correct. Um, it is, uh, usually very brightly colored, so it often has white with purple or red or pink or yellow, um, but very bright colors traditionally, and it also comes in solid colors as well.

So depending upon the style of cake that you are uh working on, uh, you could Use any color combination you would like. So all I'm doing is running the uh thinner layer of colored chocolate along one edge. And I'm just gonna set that aside. Now, I've already done another one. This is modeling chocolate and if I'm working with the modeling chocolate a lot, I have hot hands and so it tends to make the modeling chocolate very tacky and flimsy and it doesn't work as well.

So I always, um, let my modeling chocolate rest just a moment before I move on to making the petals. You can make this in a variety of sizes from small to large. You are simply trying to cut 5 of the same size pieces, and so I'll do this one just a tiny bit larger, and we'll do 2 flowers so you can see it. So just somewhere in the general range. And then, uh, what you're gonna do is each of these little segments are gonna get rolled into a ball.

Just using your hands. If your hands get sticky, that's what the cornstarch is for. And uh when we start assembling the petals together, if you're modeling chocolate has, uh, the surface has dried any, you could always use just a touch of water to get them. To stick back together. So it's a really easy process and you don't really need anything more than your hands, a paring knife, and maybe some cornstarch or water.

So I like this flower because it's quick, easy, it adds just a touch of color. That's a nice pop. All right, so once you have all of the segments rolled into a ball, you're going to, I just line them up, and I try to put the colorful part away from me because I know that's how I'm gonna be squashing them. And we really just want that color to be like on the edge of the petal. So, uh, you can see in the example here, some of them have a little bit more color, some have a little bit less, some won't have any at all depending upon the style of flower, and you're just gonna use your finger to squash it down and then go along the outer edge to thin it.

And you're trying to maintain a circle, so as you're pushing with your finger. Just make sure that um you've got a thicker edge closest to you, a thinner edge further away. And I'm not really worried about the color distribution because as these come together, um, you know, they have a lot of uh variety to them, so I'm not too concerned about that. OK. And I, it may be difficult to see, but what we have is a thick edge and a really thin edge.

That's what's gonna help give the flower a little bit of shape. All right, and then, um, you have 5 for each. And again, if your modeling chocolate is really tacky, your hands are hot or the environment you're in is hot, uh, you can just let them dry for a moment and then they'll be a little easier to manipulate. Uh, if the temperature is perfect, then you can just keep working. And what I'm gonna do now is line them up by overlapping half.

And the thicker edge is gonna get a little bit more pressure. Each time. Overlapping by half and giving it just a little bit of pressure. Now that's gonna help get all of these petals to stick together. If they didn't go together nicely, like these probably are a little drier, they might not stick together quite as easily.

Um, it proved me wrong today, but, uh, just a tap of water, uh, along the edge of all of these, and they'll all stick together. Then with your paring knife, you're just gonna make sure that it releases nicely from the surface, and you're gonna pick up one end. And you're just gonna start to roll it. And you don't want to roll this too tightly, otherwise all your flowers will end up uh overlapping and you'll get more of a rose bud. And for this one, we're looking more for an open blossom.

And then just using your finger gently, open them up and underneath you're just gonna make a little cone, just spin it between two fingers. And now you have a little plumeria. It's a really cute flower, it's super easy. It doesn't really have any texture, um, and, uh, it comes in, uh, like I said, so many color combinations. You can curl the leaves back or the petals back just a little bit if you want, or leave it open.

Anything goes. And then the same process uh is done, whether you have a large pedal or a small pedal. So I am just gonna do another one real quick, just a little bit larger. And you'll see it's still going to have the tapered edge, except this one's real thin, this one's a little thicker than the smaller petals. So when you're doing a larger pedal, you just need to uh open up that pedal really thin on one edge and leave a slightly thicker base.

And what that does is it allows it to gather in the middle without the petals getting too close together. So if I were to try to use a really big petal and didn't have a thicker base at the bottom, it would just keep twirling and overlapping and it would basically turn into a rosebud, which is beautiful, but just a different flower. So you can obviously also make a rose out of uh this same technique that I'm doing here. It's uh the same process, you just roll it a little tighter. But for today, we're doing a plumeria.

OK, so 5 altogether. And again, we're just gonna roll. The bigger ones are um sometimes harder to manipulate just cause they're a little larger, but you're just gonna roll it until they all spiral overlapping by half. And then just open up those petals with your thumb. Just like that So that's the plumeria, it's a really simple flower.

It's easy to create with just your hands, and it's a great decoration for cakes or even cupcakes.