If you take a beautiful fondant covered cake to a party, people will be amazed by your skill. That’s the pro of fondant; but what about the cons? At the same time, while people are “oo”ing and “awe”ing, you’ll be thinking about the long road it took you to get to the stage where your cake was finally complete.
First of all, you have to buy the fondant, which tends to be a little expensive. Also, you can’t always buy colored fondant. If you want a certain color it’s going to take at least an hour or so or kneading to mix in a drop of food coloring. You better hope that you mix enough too, because if you don’t, you’ll have to remix the whole batch in order to achieve the exact color match.
Fondant tends to be hard to work with for beginners and can easily crack when you covered a cake. Although it looks easy on TV, in real life, if you have a tear in your fondant, most times you’ll have to reapply it and start over. From a personal stand-point, I don’t think fondant tastes very good either.
In fact, I’ve heard bakers say that they’ve baked cakes for parties before and then watch as guests pull of the fondant and just eat the cake. I’ve never been one to want to bake a dessert which people don’t like to eat.
Although, fondant looks great and professional, for me there is a high cost. What is the point of a pretty dessert, if it doesn’t taste good? I just don’t think that fondant is worth fooling with, however there are many bakers who love fondant and would never bake a cake without it! Yes, it produces forms you can’t make with royal icing and a delectably smooth cake. Lucky for me (and you) I have an easy way to smooth out the tastier royal icing, and it’s much easier than fondant!