Monday, August 31, 2015

Trying a new fondant

So if you have been following this blog recently you may have notice that I have gotten more into working with cakes, particularly celebration cakes. When I attended the amazing cake course at Fair Cake, and made these delicious cakes, we used a lot of Renshaw fondant. This fondant was definitely easy to work with and tasted quite good over ganache. However I thought that it took the ganache to make it delicious.It looked pretty good too!



Therefore I decided to try out another fondant and, naturally, review it for you! So what is the fondant? Fondarific!


I read a great many reviews when considering which fondant to try and what I gleamed from this was that the 'best' fondant on the market, according to these bloggers, is Satin Ice. However Satin Ice presents issues for the novice caker; it tears easily on corners, it wrinkles easily and gets 'elephant skin, and some people claimed that the taste was somewhat artificial! So I looked elsewhere. Fondarific comes very highly rated among many cakers and is apparently the fondant that Duff Goldman uses and sells (re-branded with a hugely increased price-tag) as duff fondant. Since 'Ace of Cakes,' was the first cake shows that I ever saw, and became enamored with, it seems very appropriate to try this fondant.



So what is it like? I bought the 2.5Kg Antique White Buttercream Fondant. It comes in this adorable little bucket!! Inside the fondant is packed into a plastic bag


The instructions say that the texture will depend on the time of year. They say that in summer the fondant may be soft and winter it may be very hard. Well it is August here and the fondant is rock hard. Granted, it's 20'C here in the UK, so maybe that's considered cold weather. The instructions told me to microwave the fondant for 10 minutes and then work it on a counter top. The instructions say that one should use little if any cornflour. My first attempt at rolling I used none, but it stuck to everything including itself, so I used a small amount of cornflour.


I fondanted a small 4" cake (nightmare size). I found the fondant very soft as I applied it. However this gave me lot of time to work with it before it dried. It also meant that the tiniest pressure left indents and marks, which meant that I had to keep working on it. Here's the finished cake and please excuse the lighting






I have to say - I love the colour, it's a beautiful rich creamy white! You can see how it also shines, which is something that I really enjoy. It dried well overnight. But my favourite part? The taste! This fondant tastes delicious!! If you have ever bought vanilla fudge from a pic-n-mix, that is Exactly what this tastes like. It's fudgy and smooth with a delicious vanilla flavour and I am very impressed. This will not only make your cake look good but will enhance the flavour!

So it remains to be seen how this fondant will work on bigger, or more complicated cakes but so far I would definitely consider buying it again! I was not sponsored or compensated for expressing these opinions but if you would like to look at this fondant yourself here's the website.

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