Working with fondant

Last week I tried experimenting with stencils and different colored dust on my fondant cake. Where can we get the edible dust? I usually get most of my bakery ingredients from Phoon Huat. For more extensive range of imported items, I will get them from Bake It Yourself, such as the petal dust. 

Wanting to create a English royal look cake, I colored the stencils silver and gold. Love how the colors turned out! Well, I realise, entering into the world of fondants is quite a costly investment. There are hundreds of stencils available and it all depends on what look one wants to create. Anyway, here's the first 2 stencils made with silver and gold dust.

Next, with the rose stencils, I imprinted a small portion of the fondant onto the stencil, followed by covering the entire stencil with fondant. It does takes a little while to experiment with stencils, especially using the right amount of fondant to get the desired effect. It's actually quite therapeutic after a while!! Time passes so fast that I don't even realise it's noon after working on my cake for 3.5hrs! For the roses, I chose to have a sweet English look.. How I wish back then I had more time to prepare such cakes for my own wedding.. ha.

This is the final look of the cake. For the edge of the cake, I use a crimper to crimp the waves all around the cake. You can get your crimper here. I used the PME closed curved serrated crimper to get the desired effect. This is a very good tool to have because you can create different looks to the cake by varying the degree of the thickness of the waves. And for the top, I made rolled roses in pink. As you can see, I still need lots of practice on my roses.. there are so much things to learn and I wish I can commit more time to pursuing this passion without financial burden. After all, making cakes isn't that profitable as many would think so. The amount of time invested, spending time baking and travelling different places getting the right ingredients, the correct tools and the essential knick-knack just to ensure that cake is made according to customer's desire. ..woah. sounds tiring right? But, then again, with passion, I believe one can overcome all odds and achieve her dreams. One step at a time. 

Currently, I am getting certified in the PME Diploma for Sugarpaste. This is a gradual move towards getting myself grounded in the right techniques for making assorted range of fondant cakes as well as being competent to teach in future. If you keen, do stay tuned to future classes in the coming last quarter of the year. In the past, it has always been a dream to be a pastry chef but in the local scene, being a profitable one is challenging and competitive. Working in the hotel or restaurants restricts me from doing something that I like as most of the time, we have to follow instructions. And don't be surprised that the pay hardly exceeds 2.5K and with that..it's a considerably high for a commis cook. And much more...crazy working hours, seldom weekend off, hectic rush and non-stop action. At the end of the day, it was too tough that I called it quits. I never regret walking that path... because, if I had stayed on, I wouldn't have met my wonderful soulmate and begin this new journey. And along the way, I found myself having greater interest in decorating cakes, more so with fondant cakes and customised cakes. Hence, with time and patience, I hope I can bake your desired cake one day! Updates more again!

This post is written by Linda, Co-Author of The Pastry Lab.