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Fondant Designs

Lesson 3 from: Cake Decorating: Fondant Fundamentals

Lucinda Larson

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Lesson Info

3. Fondant Designs

Lesson Info

Fondant Designs

I'm gonna do a little lace molding for you who is a smooth so I'm gonna work up a little fund and here I'm going to I'm going to pull out my one of my toys this is my pasta machine which rather than trying to attach it to the surface I'm just got it attached to a surface put another piece of nonskid underneath it so it doesn't go anywhere I want to do lace but then as I pulled this up I also wanted to do ribbons and let's do the ribbons first so that they can start to set up and we can use him so I have a piece of fondant now in my pasta machine one is my thickest number and six is my thinnest number so I always you always started the thickest setting run it through I want tio you guys did good I'm impressed and I'm going to take mine up to about three possibly four let's go for just so it's a thinner, more delicate look it will set up a little faster now here's the difference between fondant and gum paste fund it will get hard just takes longer than gum paste okay, now I've got this n...

ice long piece and you're going to have to use a rolling pin if I move this over here so you guys can see what I'm doing you guys know what this is? This is a metallic ribbon that at like christmas time you can get it from some various places and I'm just going to press it onto my surface used by rolling pin here come on a little goofy things like who look metallic ribbon with dots and then I'm going to use this is pearl dustin this a super pearl I use a blush brush they have special brushes that you can buy you can buy everything you can buy everything or you can do with what you have again this is only for this not from my blush and then I'm going to brush this down with pearl dust I should add some color in here too because my guess is is that it will be easier to see if I had some color what is pearl dust? It is ground oyster shell ground oyster show yep. Wow, so it's pricey it's pearl yeah, and it just shimmers and yeah and it is a food grade and you can buy it from various suppliers. Um probably one of our biggest suppliers for prole dust is cal java he's out of california the area and uh he is really done a lot to promote cake decorating and the cake decorating things ok, so that's the pearl dust I want to add a little color where'd I put my color wait don't dig deep enough you can find it all cake decorators have pms we all pack more stuff it's I think it's part of the requirement um I'll go with purple so that we can see it well enough let's use this brush so this is also a pearl purple but can you kind of see how that purples going on there as I'm adding this purple? I'm thinking myself oh, I hope when I pull this off it doesn't look like a snake that would really bother me let's so the purple color and the and the pearl dust will work together oh yeah a lot and you can put your pearl dust over any color too so if you have colors going you khun pearl over it um the one thing it will do to your colors this will lighten or soften them up so if you're going for a real bright, vibrant color your pearls going to soften it so just keep that in mind while you're working okay, ready now let's pull off our ribbon here see how it kind of I want to blow this off but I'm not going two because you don't blow on food if I were in my bay create air, brush it with just a rand that would have blown off the excess but I'm not going to stand here and blow on it, okay, just not a good plan um I gave everybody a ruler so rulers air handy in your kitchen I have this one that I like a lot because it's perfect it's perfect for making and of course, the neater and cleaner you can keep your workers you go, the better off you'll be because then you're not having tio try to fix, improve or repair as you go, I have a tendency to want to whip through things. Years ago, I worked for perfection on everything, and I've let that go it's hard to be a perfectionist, not only on yourself but your family. So I have a couple pieces here that art exactly large enough from my loops, but if I come in here and cut him up let's, see when they tear like that let's, take it off her sticky surface here, your little, um, little corn starch things will work to avoid that. Ok, so I'm going to take this. I'm going to crinkle the edge and then I'm going to lay it like this, so I have a ribbon that one's not wanting to do it. Okay, so this is how you make one of those spectacular bows and I'm just going to accordion the back, give it a pinch, set it up on its edge, and then when those air dry we can assemble them into a boat with purple dots no questions everybody's getting this we do have one question that came so let me but you know what that is it has to do with do you find that there's a particular type of cake that is conducive to fund int um waster dry or well if you have a pound cake it holds up better than if you're doing just a sponge cake but I mostly cover sponge cakes because that's what most of my customers want that's what I work with most often um does that make sense? Answer that perfectly. Thank you. Okay, okay, how you guys doing over there? Oh, you have your hand up you could just talk out. My question is I noticed you didn't use the clear plastic upholstery shooting to roll the river now I probably could have and that probably would have been a better idea since it's stuck so bad to this surfaced another clue or another trip would abandons to just go ahead and dust it with my little corn starch pouch in your basket you have according to starch pouch which is in the clear not that one's powdered sugar the bright yellows powdered sugar which will use for our modeling chocolate that one? Yep now if you'll notice this is now purple so I can't put it back into my white and expect it to be white now it's now it's purple and I want to wipe down this surface and I could create more bows if I wanted to really full ribbon and bow but at this point I'm not going to yes do you let the bows let dry like doesn't need to be overnight for them to be it would be best if we let it dry overnight but truthfully we're going to try to use these by the end of the day so I can at least show you how it's supposed to look it may break and bend on me but we'll see how dry the room miss ok, I want to wipe down my surface coaches you can see that colored powder goes everywhere and we'll just set this over here out of the way and let dry and then let's go ahead and, um use let's go for the uh the lace and I I thought I had a corn starch pouch on I'm not seeing mine here, so that means I need to look somewhere else for one you got a question for you while you're looking for that? Okay, so sweet ninety nine would like to know how far do you have to go in informing your customers that there are certain types of things in your cake like protest in such for allergies? Um well truthful you should be disclosing everything for one of the things is this like when I'm talking to people in their ordering a specialty cake or something they'll often say, oh, they're highly allergic to seafood, and I'll go, oh, good to know I'm not putting pearl dust on this cake, and I'll make note, too, that, um, the other thing is often all say there is a pearl dust on the decorations and that's a seafood or pearl it's? Actually, I'm not sure if people with sea food allergies react to it, but I always like to err on the caution of air on the side of caution. I'm also very, very careful about the use of nuts and peanuts. I personally have a peanut allergy, and my stepmother personally has she's highly allergic to nuts, and I do not want to be responsible for somebody death, because I was worth creating something in unclean environment, so very careful about that, um, they're in that. Yeah, okay, these are we call him lace molds and a friend, and I created these and we've since sold the business to somebody else, so we no longer have any fingers in the game, but there that does not take away from how cool and awesome they are. These particular molds we can mold, um, fondant gum paste modeling, chocolate, uh, cookie dough, butter, you've got a work, it the only thing I have not been able to mold and take out has been, um ganache, which is quite disappointing because can you imagine a chocolate ganache cake with molded chocolate ganache lace on it? Wow, that would be so awesome but nope I tried everything under the sun and I can't get him to come out so ganache is not going to work I cannot run these through my dishwasher they have be washed my hand and you can see that if I use a gold dust on him that it stays in my mold and makes it look ugly still workable but just looks ugly now I'm going to run this through my pasta machine and looking out pretty purple it is now and I'll go ahead and take it to three you can go much thinner on these it looks nice but we'll disparate fast now in these smaller ones I'm just going to press it in take my spatula, trim it off so at this point once you have your cake coverage or now just into the point of figuring out different ways to decorate it so I've got that nice and trimmed and I want to press it in there the more I can precedented president good with palm of my hand, the better impression I get and you'll notice I didn't duster do anything to this mold I just spend it and then it just comes out that uh and then we can take this is when we start to really get into the pearl dust is because we start brushing our laced pieces with the pearl dust and it just kind of makes him pop get a little more in there and always claim that I had the prettiest dust in town so when you come in and clean my house all this pearl dissed now then to attach the lace at this point it's probably damped damp enough if not a little a little um manella painted on it a little bit of water a little piping jail piping jealous like cement glue once you put that on and touch it to something it's there then we can go ahead and just put it right on to our surface okay, now one thing I did want to do before we get too far along and playing with things is I wanted to talk about putting a layer funded on our surface now I see a couple of your cakes are not centered so if you guys monty gently try to center those backup, you'll be happier in the end how would you suggest doing that? Use your smoother and kind of push and smooth issue go yeah you guys, you guys you can push more than you're going to believe I would tell you some horror stories but I'm not going to let you know how many years has it taken you to master your craft I don't know I'm still working on that. Um I started cake decorating when I was fourteen, my mother had to sign me up for an adult old class get special permission for me to go to an adult class and, uh my first cake decorating instructors turned out to be one of the nation's top decorators. Her name is linda reese. She has retired. Um I have had the honor of growing up in the seattle area where probably every top buttercream artist has come out of the seattle area. And when I was a kid and could not drive, my mother would drive me to their location that they were working and I would stand and watch these people decorate cakes. I then had the privilege of getting a job with them when I was in my early twenties and got to work shoulder to shoulder with him. Um so I really have been very lucky and fortunate in that respect. Um and as my son graciously reminded me on my last birthday that I've been decorating cakes for forty years and I thought no and then I thought yeah, darn, you guys feel like you got a good eye see measuring going on over there that's the way to do it and we have a question okay, um from cassidy we missed what the holes on the side of the cake were for you say that again the holes on the side of the cake the little mark the little market and that was on the back side okay? Or are they talking about the crimping? Yes, the crimping. Okay, so I just used a pair of my tweezers to show with the krim penis okay, actually have their usually they're not plastic. They're usually metal may have little shape, so they do like little scallops, civil hearts or um there straight they come in all different size shapes and that sort of thing but basically it's like this tweezer um some of them have come with a black band so you can adjust it so it's always at the same with the supposed to you trying to hold your hand steady and then basically you just stick it into the cake surface at the same depth pinch released gently and then pull out and that's how you can create some of these little different patterns and that patterns and decorative lay almost like you're doing an apple pie to criminal and un cool on one of the one of the slides on creative life there's a a cake that's got little blue stripes and that's got crimping for that whole thing that was all cramped and then painted on with, um the food colored vodka which we're going to be doing some painting later so you can see how to do that but that's kind of that crimping is kind of a dying art and yet it's starting to make a comeback because people really do see how cool it is another thing that's kind of died away is we used to in fondant do ribbon insertion so we would make little sections and then insert little pieces of satin ribbon so it looked like the ribbon was flowing through the funding um that has pretty well died because those little pieces of ribbon were considered too much of a health hazard and so we're not really seeing that anymore but if you wanted to make little ribbon loops out of say gum pace so that they were hard inedible and then stick him in you could do that but again that's planning a little more ahead and spending a little more time basically playing this is why the british work on him for so long is because the british literally do sit work on these for months and paint do all kinds of things americans we don't do that we created it's done it's out the door it's eaten yeah it's gone thank you. Okay so now at this point what I have is I have a piece of fondant and I've rolled it out on the board but I'm what I want to do is I want to put a whole ribbon around the side of this around the board so it needs to be a long piece of ribbon and it doesn't need to be super thick it could be fairly thin so I'm going to run it through my pasta machine but it has to be long now a pasta machine was on your list it is not mandatory but I'll tell you what you'll love it I want to go a little purple on it awesome and this sounds horrible to say but I'm going to say it I decorate much differently for a wedding cake and a show cake than I do for you a baby shower cake does that make sense? Because if I am doing a wedding cake this is an important port in part of this person's life this is going to be they're having photographers there having they've spent thousands of dollars to have this special day with their special dress and I want the cake to be photographed and be beautiful okay? And what I did was I didn't measure you'll notice I just cut a straight edge as straight as I could with my pizza cutter wiggling around um this is where I really like to use piping jail, but I no I didn't bring piping jail, so I'm just going to use a thin layer of and I mean thin layer of buttercream because I want to have some sticky on my surface if you don't have piping jill use your butter cream we're just going to get this surface so that it has something to stick on two can you guys see how thin I'm making this now I can tell you if you were doing a fund and covered cake and you are not putting fondant on your board that is a major faux pas could you reiterate with that major faux pas was well if I were doing this for a judge show the judges would totally mark me down and say what it does is on your board it just makes it look clean and finished and elegant cool now feel notice I'm going to roll this up from both ends okay do do do do do do roll roll so what I have now is I have the center so your cake always has a front and a back so the first thing you want to do is you want to decide what is your front? What is your back? I kind of decided this was the back because I had the, um little nixon it in a little thing that I couldn't fix your repair and then I did some little quickie stuff, so I'm going to make that the back I'm going to attach that flat side to my front and I'm going to unroll it you said that there and hope it doesn't fall and I'm going to unroll it check it in and I have so much funding that when I get to the back I'm going to leave that little section there I want my smoother I want to start smoothing that in on let's finish enrolling and tucking on the other direction this is where a little larger cake is easier because you're curve is not as severe is on the smaller cakes if I'm doing a stacked wedding cake and fund int your cake on each tear would be on the same size board as thie the cake so you don't have to cover each tear so now when I get to the back where they made up I'm going to unroll it and I'm going to make sure I've got it checked in here I'll tuck in this side and this is where if it's thick enough you can maneuver it if it's too thin you're fighting, cracking and stuff so I'm got it like that and then see how I haven't overlapped and then what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and take my spatula for my knife and I'm going to cut that and then I'm going to trim this up with me pizza cutter right along the edge there and as the final finish you could grab a satin ribbon around it or you can leave a plane a lot that access clean this up my pizza cutter decided not to be nice and sharp for me listen, the canoe I've always wondered this in my own kitchen can you send a, uh, pizza cutter out for sharpening? You know, I bet you could make your nights yeah, I bet you could I've never sent one out neither head I'll ask my knife guy especially if you've got a good pizza cutter I noticed my good pizza cutter I run it through the dishwasher and my nice handle on it is starting to get credit so yeah ok, now in this part that I cut overlapped and cut I'm gonna peel off that side and then I'm going to very gently lift this peel off the bottom portion on the other cut side regroup it and I should have a nice clean seem that I can cover up there and I used my smoother toe smooth and then any joint that you have here that's where we had a border borders are your best friends they can cover a multitude of sins cake decorating is really the art of covering your mistakes did you guys know that? Yes despondent like at the front and wrap it around the back how high up should the ribbon com should it just be kind of should be checked right into the edge and say that's a really large with I would cut that down to about yeah cut it so that you're only having to deal with the smaller portion my students are at a disadvantage they don't have a pasta machine there over there working in a small space and trying to rule just doing mine on loosen that the chat room would love to know what brand of possible uh pasta maker you have there it's an atlas cool yeah I also have one that hooks onto my kitchen aid it is it's really nice that works well and truthfully you'd be amazed at how many of them are garage sales because people buy pasta machines thinking they're going to make pasta and then they never do so check out garage sales you might be really surprised at what you could get into garage sale and my pasta machine I actually found at like ace hardware I was like really and it was a good price I thought ok and it's interesting question from our gluten free adventures would you ever use the original fund in't circle covering the cake to cover the board you can you can cover the board with funding person and put your take on it another method issue use your board you cover your board and then you cut out the center and then put your cake into the center of that fondant um a couple of things that windows has one it gives you a perfect cover there's no scene and number two it gives your cake a section to sit down into there so there's no sliding um but truthfully I've got to tell you by the time you get despondent cakes on the board to get them covered you get this on I haven't had trouble with sliding so as faras that being one of the sellers it's okay and the method that I have seen in order to do that is you use the piping jail and then the piping gel like I said it like it actually like cement when it gets with defunding in the piping gel and it just gets to the point where nothing moves nothing moves even if you're trying to fix something it won't move so does that help? Good okay ok I've got that fairly cleaned up I would want to add a ribbon to this I did not bring ribbon and glue and all that stuff I attach my ribbon with a hot glue gun um just little dots of hot glue and then the ribbon and really does do a nice beautiful finish but I did not bring a hot glue gun or ribbon to do that so how you guys doing over there? You always say I practice thiss morning start over I don't see you start over I'm gonna walk over and help him now one thing is is I'm working backwards for you and the camera so when you're working on it you can stand right here let's put this on good there's half the battle we just ran your stocking but that's okay so when you're working on it oh had worked right in the front and let's good job we've got this little secret you have in your basket you might need to put a little shortening on you're sure she's starting to get a little dry this is not water, it is vodka but um I was going to use just a touch of it to get that to stick together we're using it like a glue okay, okay. And because it's and alcohol and not water it's going to evaporate very quickly ok, but that kind of dry before you get too stuck on it again and I think at this point you're ready to go make your trim and I would do it like over here because this is you got your crease so and can you just show me the truth but use your exact tonight so let's cut it like right there and then just go ahead and trim it up with your pizza cutter and this is going to so we have a yahoo we have a new issue, we're just gonna stretch it stretch again and you want to go underneath because you've got a little junket right there and pull that off I'm gonna let you work that out here side gently ok carefully and gently you might need your tools can you're still rolling looks good, okay, little thing right there, little dry, but you're ok, you're doing good, okay? And what I wonder is, go ahead and trend this and you can use your exactly night it's in here. There you go. But I would trim it like this and then pull off this pull off the one that's underneath. There you go, still like a straight line. You could do a straight or you do see I usually doing an angle, but it's up to you because you can see that underneath here is not much. I would take it this way any time we have a trim like that. If you make it at an angle is supposed to straight it's not as noticeable, so there you go. Ok, you want to trim one edge so that it's straight majority do that? Yeah, trim off one huge. Great. Now you've got all rolled and sticky let's. Have a little corn starch on there for you.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Lucinda Larson - Fondant Recipes.pdf

bonus material with enrollment

Lucinda Larson - Fondant Supplies List.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

Frauke
 

I love these insights! I have worked with fondant before but I will never look at it the same way or settle for the same look and effects anymore. I learned so much while having fun! Thanks for running the classes here!

fbuser 995017ee
 

Amazing class and I learned new tricks and techniques!

Elizabeth
 

Student Work

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