I’ve started playing with fondant and gum paste. It’s so much fun! I’ve been to Michael’s so much they probably know me by name. Some of the tools are expensive though, so I’ve been assembling them slowly and making substitutions whenever possible. We have a big craft department at Wal Mart that I’m also going to check into for more toys.
It’s funny, but since I’ve started this new hobby I look more closely at textures and shapes of all different kinds of objects, not just flowers, to see how I could make them out of sugar.
I also dug out of storage a set of those Wilton piping tips that I’ve had for years. I just never got around to doing very much with them. I experimented with some store bought butter cream last week and my roses sort of melted into a puddle. I couldn’t decide whether it was from it being too thin in consistency or if it was just not cool enough. I wound up using it to make Cake Pops.
**I have questions. **
Has anybody had experience with adding confectioners sugar to canned icing to give it more body?
Is there any way to coat florist wire to make it food safe?
How do you protect your flowers when they’re drying? I feel funny about leaving food out and exposed on an open counter. I’ve been covering mine with an inverted bowl.
I have silicon molds that I can flex to remove the fondant. Does any body use rigid molds and if so, how do you get the fondant out?
You can use a food tent like this to allow drying without exposing to bugs or whatever: GrillPro
What are you using the canned frosting for? If you’re just practicing your decorating skillz, honestly I still think it’s way better to make your own frosting with shortening and powdered sugar. You can make a big batch and it stores for quite a while (and can be re-used, assuming you don’t plan to eat it!) Canned frosting has all sorts of stuff in it to maintain a specific consistency, I just don’t think adding more powdered sugar will work that well…
I like the food tent. The air can still circulate. It was taking things too long to dry with a bowl covering them.
I have a bunch of canned icing in my pantry that I bought on sale and I wanted to use it up first. It’s not a hardship to make some from scratch though. I guess I can use the canned stuff to crumb coat.
For specialized supplies, check out New York Cake Supply. I stop in sometimes and they have good prices, but I have to be careful, because I start randomly buying things because they seem so wonderful. Of course I need edible glitter, a giant tube of raspberry jelly doughnut filling, a cake pan in the shape of superman, a gum paste tiger lily, and root beer candy flavoring…why do you ask?.
Why do people want to decorate with fondant when it’s thoroughly disgusting? A cake is for eating, it should not have any part so gross it has to be removed to make the cake edible. Just think: you could make pretty, tasty cakes instead of pretty, disgusting cakes, if you resisted the siren call of fondant. Ok I’ve said my piece.
Let us know your results with using canned frosting as a crumb coat! I’ve never tried it because I always assumed it wouldn’t ‘crust’ or get solid enough in the fridge to be successful.
I don’t work with wire or fondant, so no help there, but you can do this. It’s not something I like to do, because nothing is going to give you the crisp roses that the crisco/confectioner’s sugar gives you.
You can, if you’re decorating right before eating, get a bit of that edge back by chilling the commercial icing/sugar blend. But when it warms up, there they go.
I wouldn’t recommend adding the confectioners sugar to the canned frosting. As already mentioned, the canned frosting is at that particular consistency for many reasons. Youd be better off practicing roses with a sugar/Crisco mix that you can scrape and reuse until it gets too soft. Then all you do is add more sugar.
When I took gumpaste classes, our instructor’s flower-wire remedies were either 1) cover the part of the wire where you’ll be forming the flower with a teardrop of gumpaste, or 2) use a strand of uncooked spaghetti or bucatini as your wire. The nice thing about the pasta is that it really makes you pay attention to how many layers of petals and their thick vs. thin ration. It can be very tricky!
I always dried my flowers on one of those green floral styrofoam things which I left, undisturbed on our dining room hutch. The minute they were completely dried I’d store them in a plastic shoebox well away from heat and humidity. They kept very well.
I’ve never used rigid molds for fondant. You might want to check the Cake Central boards to see if somebody there has a tutorial or has asked the question in the forum.
Isn’t it a blast? I haven’t done gumpaste in awhile, and I’m just getting into fondant. I use buttercream exclusively at work, which can be dicey at times, depending on the temperature in there.
Thank you so much for your suggestions, especially about the pasta. It’s given me the idea to see if I might be able to form a supportive structure from the gum paste itself.