Thursday, July 22, 2010

Fondant!



Have you ever seen those beautiful cakes draped with colorful, smooth fondant and thought "I wish I could do that?" Guess what? You can! Yes, you! All it takes is a few ingredients, a couple tools and time. The possibilities are endless. The colors, shapes, designs are infinite!

I've made two cakes so far and am aching to make another one! My friend chose a Las Vegas Casino Night theme for her birthday, which was hosted at a property I manage. It was great fun! I was pressed for time so the cake wasn't as detailed as I would have liked, but it went over well and put that fire in me to take another stab at it!



It took me this long to realize I didn't put a six at the other side of the card! I used the numbers two and six because it was her 26th birthday and on the side of the cake I had the letter "R" and some additional poker chips and cards. It was a lot of fun!

The next birthday party I went to was a Jungle Theme and the birthday girl was dressing in zebra print so I went to work making a chocolate cake with chocolate mousse filling. Check it out!



The technique is really quite simple. Microwave 16 oz. of mini marshmallows with 2 tablespoons of water for no more than 2 minutes, just until they become soft and start to melt. Pour them out onto the 2 lb.s of powdered sugar. A great tip is to SIFT the powdered sugar first which will help eliminate little balls of unmixed sugar in the end product.



I used one hand for kneading and kept the other hand clean and used a bench scraper to help it along. The mixture is VERY sticky at first, but don't worry, it WILL come together! Try to keep a little powdered sugar on top so your hand hits that first.



You can see that the more you knead the more incorporated it becomes and the stickiness goes away.



Knead it just a little more and your finished fondant will look like this!!



Wrap the fondant in plastic wrap securely and in a sealed ziploc! It will keep for months. Do NOT freeze the fondant. I've read mixed things when it comes to refrigerating the fondant. Some recipes call for a mix of two tablespoons of water and one tablespoon of clear extract. I didn't have clear extract so I omitted that and used water only.

This is a great Fondant tutorial to follow!

Enjoy!

1 comment:

Fresh Local and Best said...

I do believe this what dreams are made of.. lol! the imagination of cake decorating would not be made possible without this stuff. It looks like you did a terrific job on the Las Vegas Casino cake.