Can a clear glaze be made without gelatin or starch?

I'd like to press some edible flowers onto a cheesecake I will be making. I'll need some sort of a glaze, and my first instinct was egg whites, but then I learned that those tend to brown, which is why they're mostly used for bread and pastries. I then looked into clear cake glazes, and all of them used a thickening agent such as gelatin or corn starch, but I don't want a very noticeable glaze, I just want something that'll keep the flowers pressed to the surface of the cake without being too sticky.

Would just sugar and water (and possibly a bit of rosewater) work as a glaze?

baking glaze

Best Answer

Bakery glazes are frequently made with pectin, so that is an option. It would still be a noticeable glaze, though it would be clear and could be flavorless. If you just want the flowers to stick to the top of the cheesecake, it's possible that it would be tacky enough without any glaze. They might just stick to the surface. Alternately, you could use one of the other glazes, but just put a dot under each flower rather than glazing the whole surface.