Luster dust substitutes

The most practical alternative and often the better tool. An aerosol of edible pearl, gold or silver coats a whole cake, a tray of macarons or a set of chocolates in seconds and gives a smooth even sheen with no brush marks. What you give up is control: you cannot pick out a single petal edge or shade a flower from pale to deep, and the finish is more uniformly glossy and less pearlescent than hand-brushed dust.

Best for

whole cakes and cake boards, large batches of cookies or chocolates, even all-over shimmer, quick jobs

Spray in short bursts from about 8 inches away in a well ventilated space, and cover anything nearby, since the overspray travels. Check the can says edible rather than only non-toxic.

Petal dust is the matte sibling of luster dust and is applied identically with a soft dry brush. You get exactly the same color control and the same ability to shade a sugar flower from the center outward, just with no shine at all. On realistic flowers and leaves this actually looks better, since real petals are not metallic. On anything meant to look like gold or pearl it clearly falls short.

Best for

sugar flowers and leaves, shading and blushing petals, realistic fruit and vegetables in marzipan, matte color on fondant

Apply to fully dried sugar work, or the dust grabs unevenly and blotches. Powdered food coloring is more intensely pigmented than petal dust, so tap most of it off the brush before it touches the piece.

Gives a wet, high gloss shine rather than a pearly shimmer, which is the right look for glazed fruit, shiny berries on a tart or a slick finish on a chocolate decoration. Brushed on thinly it dries tacky but not sticky. It adds a faint sweetness and it stays slightly sticky in humidity, so pieces should not be stacked.

Best for

glossy fruit and berries, shiny leaves, wet-look finishes, sticking other decorations down

Warm the syrup slightly so it brushes out thin, and use the smallest amount that covers. Piping gel does the same job with less sweetness and dries a touch firmer.

The dye-free route to color on sugar work. Cocoa gives warm brown shading that is excellent on modeled figures and chocolate work, matcha gives a soft green for leaves, and crushed freeze-dried raspberry gives an intense pink. All three are matte, all three add their own real flavor, and all three are coarser than a milled decorating dust, so the finish is a little grainy under close inspection.

Best for

natural color with no additives, shading modeling chocolate, leaves and stems, dusting truffles and macarons

Sift the powder first and use a very soft dry brush. Freeze-dried fruit powders pull moisture from the air and can go patchy on a humid day, so apply them shortly before serving.

Not a dust at all, but often the better answer when what you actually want is a shiny colored surface. Tinted candy melts brushed or dipped over a decoration set to a firm, genuinely glossy shell. This is opaque rather than shimmery, it adds real thickness and real chocolate flavor, and it obliterates fine surface detail underneath.

Best for

coating cake pops and cookies, chocolate decorations, glossy colored finishes, sealing porous surfaces

Use only oil-based or powdered coloring in melted chocolate. A drop of water-based gel color will seize the chocolate into a stiff grainy mass instantly.

Craft glitter is plastic or metal foil, and much of the very sparkly dust sold to decorators is labelled non-toxic or for decorative use only, which means it is not approved as food. Non-toxic is not the same as edible. These products should not be eaten, and if you use them at all they must be applied to something that will be removed before serving, such as a plastic pick or a fondant topper you lift off.

Best for

nothing that anyone will eat

The wording to look for on the label is edible, or a listing of actual food ingredients and approved colors. If the label only says non-toxic or food contact, treat it as decoration to be removed, not as food.