Fondant is a flexible, easy-to-shape icing that enables you to add excitement to cakes, cupcakes, cookies, and other desserts. You can roll it out and cut it, imprint designs, color it, flavor it, create amazing color effects and form it into just about any shape (some describe it as kid’s modeling clay for cake decorators). There is so much that you can do with fondant – the possibilities are virtually limitless – and it’s easy for anyone to use. If you haven’t tried using fondant yet, you really should give it a try.
Two of the most frequent questions we get about fondant are how to flavor it and how to color it, so here are some suggestions and tips.
Flavoring Rolled Fondant
Flavoring rolled fondant is strictly a personal preference, but if you are using buttercream to ice the cake before applying a fondant covering, the buttercream flavor and rolled fondant flavor should always complement each other.
Last week I did a fondant taste test in the decorating room. I baked a yellow cake and then iced the cake with buttercream icing. I flavored three strips of fondant, each with a different flavor: vanilla extract, orange extract and cherry oil-based flavoring.
For 24 ounces of rolled fondant use about 1 teaspoon to 1 1/2 teaspoons of any extract flavoring. For 24 ounces of rolled fondant use 1/4 teaspoon of any oil-based flavoring. Make a well in the fondant and place the flavoring and knead it into the fondant. Remember it is all about personal preferences and tastes.
- The cherry flavoring won over the vanilla and orange. It was much stronger in flavor.
- The vanilla and orange were too mild, but most people agreed it depends on the flavor of the cake and icing that determines the fondant flavor.
- Most agreed that the cherry oil-based flavor would be great with a chocolate fondant, and that the vanilla and orange extract amounts needed to be increased.
Most people prefer using a clear vanilla extract, but others prefer lemon, almond or orange extracts for flavor. You can also use candy oil-based flavorings that are used for chocolate, but the oils have very strong flavors and you can use only small amounts. For both extracts and oil-based flavors you would knead the desired amounts into the fondant.
Tinting Rolled Fondant
To tint rolled fondant, use icing colors and a clean toothpick, adding small amounts of color until you reach the desired color. Some colors like pink and violet do fade a bit from sunlight and fluorescent lights so you may want to deepen the shade a bit from what you originally need. After you knead the color into the fondant, wrap the fondant very well in plastic wrap and place in an air-tight plastic bag, then place it into a small box or plastic container to keep out the light.
You can also tint fondant by using pre-tinted fondant multi-packs. Just take a tiny amount of tinted fondant and knead into white fondant for your desired shade. Our fondant color blending chart lists several custom color combinations.
For marbleizing fondant, add icing color to the fondant and only knead slightly until the color begins to blend in, creating marbleized streaks. You can also use 2 or 3 different colors for marbleizing the fondant and get wonderful results. For black fondant, you can make chocolate fondant and add a bit of black icing color to the fondant.
See more fondant decorating tips on our website! For more inspiration, browse our fondant project ideas.
Susan is the Senior Cake Decorator with over 20 years of decorating experience in the Decorating Room. She is also an instructor at the Wilton School of Cake Decorating and Confectionery Arts. Susan enjoys her job because each day is new and different — from baking cookies, decorating gingerbread houses or decorating multi-tiered wedding cakes all created for the photos in our publications. There is never a dull moment in the Decorating Room…always a lot of excitement here! Susan is a member of ICES (International Cake Exploration Societe) and the State Representative for Illinois.