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My Fondant Recipe – “How to make fondant” is one of my greatest successes. Not only it gets many compliments, it gets people so happy with the result that they take the time to write and tell me about their experience.

I LOVE getting readers’ mails for several reasons, but the thing I didn’t expect is that in many cases I learn new things regarding my recipes. In the Mail below Janna actually improved my Fondant Recipe, You can benefit from her experience.

Janna made this lovely fondant cake following my fondant recipe, here’s what she wrote:

Janna's Fondant Cake

Hi there.

First of all, THANK YOU for all the very good information on your website. After years of decorating many cakes over the years with (unwieldy and annoying) buttercream, I decided to make the leap into the wild world of fondant, and the results were beautiful, as you will see!

The fondant tasted delicious, as did the fondant-friendly cake (everyone exclaimed with shock and surprise at how delicious the cake itself was… tender, moist, and STURDY.)
I crumb-coated it with buttercream made with butter-flavored Crisco. I chose that over butter because I knew the cake would be sitting out in the sun for a long time. It sat out, uncovered, from 10 pm last night to 3 pm today, for three hours of that in near-direct sun, and it didn’t so much as budge. It held up PERFECTLY, not one sign of melt or sweat.

It spent the entire night (14 hours!) out in open air so the fondant could dry, and it did not impact the moistness of the cake one iota. By the way, this was my very first experience with fondant, but I made three batches in total. The first fondant batch was a crumbly mess (in retrospect, too much sugar added too early), and I had to throw it away. The second fondant batch came out beautifully–it was the main covering–and contrary to your advice I did add the gel coloring and the shortening during the initial mix. I also used my Kitchen Aid mixer to do most of the mixing, using the dough hook, and did the final kneading by hand.

Adding the color and shortening at that time worked great, as did using the mixer. I also added some salt to the mix, which I do with all my frostings and fillings. It makes the sweet “pop” more. The third fondant batch was pure white to color small pieces for the design. Instead of plastic wrap, I kept tupperware containers handy which was much more convenient. May I suggest that you place more emphasis in the fondant recipe on not putting in ALL the sugar that the recipe can contain? If you do so, then once the fondant cools it is far too stiff. Advise users of the recipe that the HEAT of the fondant is the key element to easy handling.

Fondant Recipe - decorating with fondant

You may be interested to know that, for my party of approximately 50 people, I made a huge (16″) cake, which required two entire batches of batter. I flavored it using almond AND vanilla, and twice as much salt as the recipe called for.

I used my deep dish pizza pan to bake it, which fit an entire batch of batter.
Before baking, I divided the batter into six bowls and tinted each one of the colors of the rainbow. I poured in red, then orange on that, then yellow on that, etc. I made both layers of the cake like this. When I assembled the cake, I fit them together so the final color (purple) of each layer touched, so we had a big purple center with rainbow radiating out from it. It looked magnificent!

Fondant recipe - The rainbow look of the cake

My mother-in-law took a short video of the moment when I surprised our guests by slicing into the cake… I’ll send it along too. It was a fun addition to a child’s birthday cake fantasy come true! Finally, I took your (amazing) cake recipe and The cake was a humongous success at my son’s sixth birthday party.

Thanks for making my first experience with fondant such a resounding success and for making my son’s birthday party so special!

Best, Janna

Janna – Thank you very much for your mail! I actually learnt how to improve my fondant recipe, mails such as yours makes me find the time and energy to continue my blog.

Happy Cooking