Disco Dust is a NO NO!

I am one of those people that just love sparkly things.

I recently got a request from a friend to do her daughter's 5th birthday cake, and her daughter told her exactly what she wanted on it. It was to have pink flowers and butterflies. The rest was up to me.

So naturely, being this is for the most adorable 5-year-old you ever saw, I aimed to please. I was intent all day thinking about what my design for this cake was going to be, and I'm thinking sparkly, sparkly...something sparkly. Then it hits me. I'm going to do some pink carnations and a smaller flower with little butterflies flying just above them and one already landed on the flowers. But the butterflies just MUST have some sparkle. DISCO DUST! Yeah. So, I go buy some disco dust, and I don't usually do that without looking into whether it is food safe or not. But, I'm thinking, "Hey, they sell it in the cake making section, it has to be edible", right...wrong.

After researching Disco dust, low and behold I find out that it only supposed to be used on non-edible items. It turns out that disco dust is a very finely ground plastic. WHAT! I'm so glad that I didn't put it on the cake yet. I had only intended putting it on my butterflies (which I was going to make out of royal icing) anyway, but still...nowhere on the container does it say that it is for non-edible items only.

So, just FYI you may want to look into your dusts and glitters and see just whether they are meant to be used on the cake or the non-edible parts that go on the cake. One lady mentioned in her post that she was upset because she put it all over her cake thinking it was edible. I'm sorry but I don't believe I will be putting any finely ground plastic on this beautiful little girls cake. I think I will just dust them with sugar.