Stop With The Fondant
You know all these crazy decorated cakes you see all over the place, with fancy brocade designs and perfect flowers and chocolate figurines and so on? Well, that smooth look and flexibility necessary to make such intricate designs is the product of fondant.
Fondant is, basically, inedible powdered sugar Play-Doh. It is made in such a way as to make it thick and doughy and awful tasting. In order to actually eat any of the cakes below, one must peel the fondant layers off the cake first. Oh, you could eat it if you wanted to, but it's really gross. Unless you have a hankering for food coloring and Elmer's Glue.
Yes, they are beautiful, but the process makes it impossible to eat. Might as well buy some plastic animals and fake flowers (ugh!) and place them on top. And don't you ever try to eat any decorations made of modeling chocolate. That's 80 percent beeswax. Eeeeeewwwww!
Once you know about fondant, why would anyone choose a cake covered in it? And you have to consider whether the cake inside would be any good, since the decorator was obviously putting all of his or her time into designing the crap you can't eat on the outside.
What's the alternative? There are many. If you really wanted fancy edible decorations on your cake, you might like marzipan. Not everyone likes the taste of it, but the Swiss like it. I prefer buttercream frosting. It's delicious. How can you go wrong with butter and sugar, eh? Only problem with buttercream is it doesn't like hot weather. Keep that puppy in the fridge -- maybe even renting a fridge just for the cake -- until it's time to serve or until it can get to some air conditioning.
One more alternative is to a whole other direction with the cake. I happen to really like croquembouche, the traditional French wedding cake. It is a pyramid of cream puffs filled with whipped cream or custard and held together with caramel. Sometimes they are enclosed in a spun sugar nest. Beautiful and delicious and unique, what else could you want?
Enough with the fondant. If people wise up about this crap, bakeries would stop making them, and we could go back to yummy cakes for special occasions. And you pastry chefs who are basing your entire business on rolling out Play-Doh and passing it off as food: Shame on you! Back to preschool with you!
I've attached some photos of major offenders. Pretty, yes, but so are Barbie dolls and I don't want to eat those either. The last three photos are croquembouche.
Fondant is, basically, inedible powdered sugar Play-Doh. It is made in such a way as to make it thick and doughy and awful tasting. In order to actually eat any of the cakes below, one must peel the fondant layers off the cake first. Oh, you could eat it if you wanted to, but it's really gross. Unless you have a hankering for food coloring and Elmer's Glue.
Yes, they are beautiful, but the process makes it impossible to eat. Might as well buy some plastic animals and fake flowers (ugh!) and place them on top. And don't you ever try to eat any decorations made of modeling chocolate. That's 80 percent beeswax. Eeeeeewwwww!
Once you know about fondant, why would anyone choose a cake covered in it? And you have to consider whether the cake inside would be any good, since the decorator was obviously putting all of his or her time into designing the crap you can't eat on the outside.
What's the alternative? There are many. If you really wanted fancy edible decorations on your cake, you might like marzipan. Not everyone likes the taste of it, but the Swiss like it. I prefer buttercream frosting. It's delicious. How can you go wrong with butter and sugar, eh? Only problem with buttercream is it doesn't like hot weather. Keep that puppy in the fridge -- maybe even renting a fridge just for the cake -- until it's time to serve or until it can get to some air conditioning.
One more alternative is to a whole other direction with the cake. I happen to really like croquembouche, the traditional French wedding cake. It is a pyramid of cream puffs filled with whipped cream or custard and held together with caramel. Sometimes they are enclosed in a spun sugar nest. Beautiful and delicious and unique, what else could you want?
Enough with the fondant. If people wise up about this crap, bakeries would stop making them, and we could go back to yummy cakes for special occasions. And you pastry chefs who are basing your entire business on rolling out Play-Doh and passing it off as food: Shame on you! Back to preschool with you!
I've attached some photos of major offenders. Pretty, yes, but so are Barbie dolls and I don't want to eat those either. The last three photos are croquembouche.
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