Decorating with Fondant

Fondant is a sort of play-doh-ish textured icing of sorts. When you look at a wedding cake and think "wow, how did they get the icing so smooth?" you are probably looking at fondant.

You can purchase-premade fondant at craft stores (or wal mart, I get mine there as it's closer and cheaper- in the cake decorating section). It comes in blocks that are a bit stiff.

Ice your cake well with whatever kind of icing you want- butter cream or stuff that Betty Crocker makes. Use a goodly amount so that you don't end up spreading it out too much and getting it all crumby- you may think that the fondant will cover your mistakes, but you'd be wrong in that assumption. It hides no sins.

Dust the counter well with powdered sugar. Kneed the fondant as you would dough, using powdered sugar to coat your hands as you would flour. Kneed it until it's considerably softer and you could envision rolling it out. That's the next step, to be done with a rolling pin and yet more powdered sugar.

Roll it pretty thin- about 1/4 of an inch. It's difficult and takes a good deal of time. Make sure you've measured your cake- sides and top, and have a large enough piece to cover it. It won't do to be stretching it once it's placed.

Use two hands, or a hand and a rolling pin, to very quikly but gently pick up the fondant sheet and place it on the cake. Do your very best to center it on the first shot so that it doesn't have to go sliding around and messing things up.

Trim the fondant with a razor, but make sure you don't trim too much! You can cut slivers out to shape it around corners or round cakes, but coaxing it to stick to itself again is tricky. Use your fingers and some water.

You can color fondant with food coloring. The gel kind works better than the liquid, so try to find that. Just slip a bit on, then kneed the fondant until the color is completely evenly distributed (or you can easily marble it by stopping early). Fondant cutters are available (although cookie cutters would work well, too). Don't worry about powdered sugar on the colors- it wll come off fine.

To stick various fondant pieces to the cake, brush the backs with water and hold them firmly in place for a few seconds. When you're done, brush the colors with water and the powdered sugar will disappear