How to Make Edible Glitter (Cake Decorating DIY)

Today I’m showing you how to make EDIBLE GLITTER! Edible glitter is a cake decorating product that can be expensive and sometimes hard to find. I gathered three of my favourite different techniques to show you how to DIY homemade edible glitter!

  Subscribe to Cupcakes and Cardio for weekly cake tutorial videos and all things baking! 

I love all things sparkly and shiny and lately I have been using a ton of edible glitter in my cake decorating ideas and tutorials. Being in a small town means that when I run out of something, I can’t just run to the store to get more, especially if it’s a hard to find cake decorating product. Edible glitter, or disco dust can be on the pricey side as well. Hopefully through these three tutorials I’m able to save you some time and money by making it yourself.

The first way to make edible glitter is the one I liked the least. To me, using cane sugar ended up just looking like sanding sugar, and not really glitter.  But the positive of this way is that it is super fast. You can even get away without baking the sugar, just let it dry out on a parchment paper sheet if you want to. The second way is by using gum tex, which is a widely available product at cake and craft stores (I got mine at Bulk Barn). This way was more difficult to work with as it had lots of bumps and what appeared to be clumps of gum, but it turned out ok. Someone during the drying process the clumps dry out and disappear. The third, final and best way I found was to use gelatin. I’ve used gelatin for edible balloons before, so I figured if I followed the same procedure as I did for the balloons, it should work for a sheet of gelatin, which would lead to flakes. Sure enough it did and makes for a super, shiny flake.

Investing in the spice grinder attachment for this technique was a huge time saver. I already had the coffee grinder, figured I could use the spice grinder for spices and the gelatin so I spent the extra $30 for the attachment. You can find spice grinders for under $20 though if you don’t already have the Kitchen Aid coffee grinder, and you don’t think you’ll be using the grinder for anything other than gelatin, then I would buy the cheaper version. When grinding the glitter up, I was airing on the side of caution and trying not to grind everything to a powder. I ground it for about 10 seconds, then transferred the glitter to a sieve to separate the large and small pieces and then transferred the larger pieces back to the grinder for a second go.

How to Make Edible Glitter

1. Sugar
Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup cane sugar
• gel paste

Procedure:

1. Place sugar into a zip-lock bag and drop 1-2 drops of gel paste into the bag. Seal the bag and mix the color into the sugar until the sugar is completely coloured.
2. Dump sugar onto a piece of parchment paper lining a baking tray and spread out flat. Place into a preheated oven (350F) and bake for 7-9 minutes.
3. Allow sugar to cool completely before crumbling up any chunks and place into a seal-able container for storage.

2. Gum-Tex
Ingredients:

• 1 tsp gum
• 4 tablespoons boiling water
•  luster dust

Procedure:

1. Combine gum tex, luster dust and boiling water in a small bowl. Stir until mixture becomes paste like (there will likely still be lumps).
2. Spread mixture onto a silicone mat on a baking tray and baking in a 275F oven for around 30 minutes, or until the mixture is completely dry.
3. Break or cut mixture up into small pieces and grind with a spice or coffee grinder.
4. Store in a sealed container for later use.

3. Gelatin
Ingredients:

• 10g gelatin
• 3 tablespoons water
• luster dust
• gel paste
• pearl airbrush

Procedure:

1. Combine gelatin, luster dust, gel paste, airbrush color and  water in a small bowl. Stir until mixture is combined.
2. Spread mixture onto a piece of acetate and allow to dry overnight or until the mixture is completley dry.
3. Break or cut mixture up into small pieces and grind with a spice or coffee grinder.
4. Store in a sealed container for later use.