How to Make Wedding Cake Fondant

All those cable TV shows that show beautifully decorated wedding cakes have made fondant--once an obscure item reserved for high-end cake decorators--a household name. Fondant is used often in cake decorating because it's so versatile: It can be rolled smooth and laid over the top of a cake to form a perfect blanketed surface for further decorating. It can be sculpted like clay into any shape you can imagine. And rolled fondant can be cut into any shape and stacked on top or adhered to the sides of a cake for additional decoration. While cake decorators often buy fondant at specialty bakery supply stores--by the bucket-full--you can learn how to make your own fondant icing for a beautiful wedding cake.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Tub of Fondant Icing or Kitchen ingredients and fondant recipes Coloring paste Parchment paper Cookie cutters or custom made cutout forms

1. Try your hand at preparing homemade fondant recipes. Some of these recipes are difficult to prepare, and practicing ahead of time is a good idea. One easy, no-cook fondant is made by mixing 2/3cup butter, 2/3cup corn syrup, 1t vanilla, 1/2t salt, and 2 pounds of powdered sugar in a mixer until it's smooth and easy to work with. Add more powdered sugar if it's sticky. Look online for other fondant recipes, and try a few before you decide.

2. Purchase a tub of uncolored fondant and experiment with adding decorator cake coloring from a cake decorating store. These colors are available in metallics and in several shades. They're nothing like the drops of food coloring your grandmother used. Experiment until you find a combination that matches the bridal colors. It might help to have a swatch of fabric from the bride's dress (if it isn't white) or whichever colors you're supposed to be matching. If it's an outdoor wedding, take your colored fondant outside, to verify, in the sunlight, that the colors are accurate. You can color your fondant days before the event, storing it back int he bucket or, if you've made several colors, in ziploc bags to be reworked the day you decorate the cake.

3. Use your colored fondant icing to sculpt any flowers, cutouts or other embellishments you'll be using on your cake before you cover the cake. These items can sit on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper to dehydrate while you're baking the cake. If they will need to be bent or formed to your cake, lay a piece of plastic wrap over them and store them in the fridge while you're waiting. Allow them to cool to room temperature before bending, so the surface doesn't appear cracked. When the cake is completely cooled, fillings have been added and the cake stacked, roll out a layer of fondant and drape it over the top of the cake. trim the edges to fit and decorate with your cutout shapes and sculpted flowers.

4. 
   Fondant Can be Used for Cookies, Too

   Transport your cake carefully; fondant icing is very heavy and a large cake might require 2-3 strong people to lift it and move it into place.

Tips & Warnings

• Be sure to get plenty of pictures of your fondant wedding cake.
• Most fondant Icing performs best at room temperature. Each recipe, however, is different. Find a brand or recipe you're comfortable with and get plenty of practice before the big day.

Resources

• Everything You Need to Know About Fondant
• Why did I give up this eHow account and start writing as 6daughters4me?

[6daughters4me]

on 11/8/2008 that was delicious, I used almond extract instead