Fondant

So a friend ordered some cupcakes which she needed for work. They were simple apple green and orange cupcakes with the letters "B" and "E" on them. She also wanted them to be packed in boxes of twos to be given out.

After a few mishaps with fondant, namely fondant melting and slipping off the Barney cake, and also fondant melting and dripping off the safari cupcakes(!!), I decided to try a different brand of fondant.

I have tried Snow Ice fondant before, and I find it awfully tacky and though it's very elastic and easy to work with, I doesn't dry well. Or rather, it doesn't dry at all!!! So I crossed that out from my list a long time ago. It is a Malaysian product. I also found mold growing on the fondant in a couple of packets I bought, so I really doubt the quality of this product.

So far, I've mostly been using Bakels fondant. It's made in New Zealand and is really soft. It is therefore harder to work with. It can become very soft in our climate and stretches and tears easily. I would not recommend this to a beginner, but I prefer it's taste and it dries up nicely. However, the mishaps I mentioned before were all with Bakels fondant. I think it's too soft for our climate and though it can produce great results, the finished product is very unstable in our climate. I even tried making flowers with it, and they dried out really nice at first, but wilted in the end.

This latest fondant which I used is Mauri fondant. It is also a Malaysian product and comes in huge tubs of 7kgs. It is very tough and elastic, much like cold chewing gum! I think I will need to develop biceps to be able to work this dough effortlessly! It was very, very hard to knead, but is very stable. I haven't had much experience with it yet, but it looks like it can stand our climate much better than the Bakels fondant. I shall try making gumpaste models with this Mauri fondant and see how it dries up. I hope I will be able to make flowers with it too!

One thing though, the taste of it is not as good as Bakels, but I figure stability is more important, since most people peel off the fondant anyway!! What about you? Do you eat your fondant?

Another fondant which I recently discovered was available here is Satin Ice fondant. I have heard that this fondant is delicious and is what most professionals overseas use. It is also the most expensive, since the ones I found here are small tubs.

I realize though that what works for professionals in other countries does not necessarily work for us here. So right now, I will use Mauri fondant for the mean time and will try Satin Ice soon.

I still have more experimenting to go before I can decide on which fondant to stick with...