Fondant Fun ~ The First Time Around

Hello my friends! This entry is supposed to be of vanilla cupcakes & buttercream recipes. But before I do that, let me share the following with you.

I have always admired other blogger's creations, especially tiny fondant figurines that I thought were impossible to construct (well, for me at least). I especially love, love, love the handyworks of Bakerella & Su Yin. These ladies are absolute geniuses at what they do and it seems that they NEVER run out of ideas. I seriously think that they should come up with a book. I'll be first in line to buy!

Now....as for yours truly, my first experience with fondant was for my brother's wedding cupcakes. I thought it would be nice to have some flowers as toppers so I bought a pack of fondant, a set of basic flower making tools, a few bottles of colour gels and started to experiment on my own. The first thing I did was to pinch a small portion of the fondant and tasted it. I heard that they don't taste too good. But hey, it wasn't bad at all. But then again nothing beats buttercream. Well what can I say, other than the heavenly taste of whipped butter and icing sugar, I don't mind getting my hands dirty while eating a cake. Fondant is just too......tidy, don't you think so?

Here are some pics I managed to take;

the essentials: a flat working surface (i used the back of a glass chopping board),  icing/powdered sugar (to dust the work area & hands), toothpick (use them to apply colours), fondant (but of course), a rolling pin, flower making tools, cutters, gel colours, shrink wrap (to wrap unused fondant which will dry out quickly otherwise), water (to stick fondant together)

dust, roll and cut out

as you can see, the thickness of the first cut outs were inconsistent. I rested them on a piece of foam dusted with icing sugar. Started off with pink and purple colours. Then I brought the flower making tools into play; I pried and I pressed and I poked till I was happy with the shapes. 

And as the day progressed, I became a little bit more adventurous and experimented with more colours and layering. Then I topped some pretty metallic dragees on them.  Heck, I even threw in a ducky while I was at it :) Cute little fellow eh?

spot the ducky!

* It's been 2 weeks since the wedding and the extra flowers that I kept are still good. It didn't turn rock hard, the colours didn't fade and the taste is fine.