It took me awhile to figure out that SUGARPASTE icing and FONDANT are more or less the same thing. Except, apparently, the original European Fondant involves some sort of cooking. As snowdrop pointed out in his/her comment in previous post, some fondant recipes use egg white.
The one I am using for the wedding cake, is from Australian Women's Weekly (to the uninformed, its a series of cookbooks...I don't consider myself an Australian Woman who read a weekly magazine).
For 500g of fondant
2 tablespoons water, with 3 teaspoons gelatine, dissolved together over low heat
When gelatine is dissolved, and make sure that it is, or you get unsightly clumps of booger (pei see) looking particles, add 2 table spoons liquid glucose, and 2 teaspoons glycerine.
Now, despair not, these are quite down to earth ingredients that you can get at the baking supply shops. Probably not in the supermarkets.
The resulting solution should be a viscous, but flowy liquid, the consistency of pouring honey. (not the PURE manuka honey which is like coagulated oil).
Slowly pour and stir gradually into a bowl of 480g (3 cups) sifted icing sugar. I hear there's a brand of icing sugar in Chang Tung (that's a bit costlier than normal), that doesn't need sifting. Continue stirring with a wooden spoon, until all the liquid has been poured. When you can no longer stir, pour all the stuff out onto a surface that's powdered slightly with ICING SUGAR. (not flour). Knead (and this is where I got my meta carpal tunnel syndrome) until it becomes a nice smooth pliable chunk. Its quite amazing, actually, that so little liquid, and so much sugar, can all come together like that.
6 comments:
yay, fondant recipe for me. thanks :)
ya, i also just only found out recently that sugarpaste and fondant are like the same thing.
I just discovered your blog as I was doing some research on the naming conventions for icing in the US, UK & Australia (I'm in Aus).
Just for a useless bit of trivia, the Australian Women's Weekly is in fact a monthly magazine. Decades ago it use to be a weekly magazine but is now published monthly. And their recipe books are fantastic. Please be aware that a Australian Tablespoon is 20ml unlike the UK & US were it is 15ml.
anonymous, thank you for your tip. yup, we are well aware of the discrepancy between the british tablespoon and australian. of course some people just have to be different.
but by and large, i dont think 5ml of liquid makes a whole load of difference to any particular recipe, unless its a chemistry experiment, in which case, a pipette might become handy, heh heh. in fact, these days, for non crucial measurements, i dont even bother with a measuring spoon...
oh, anonymous, i just re-read the post, coz i was wondering what you meant abt AWW being a monthly thing. Actually, I wasn't referring to the magazines, I was referring to the AWW series of cookbooks. It was just a play with words, Australian Women's Weekly, and how I am not an Australian Woman who reads it weekly. Okay, weak, i know...but yar, it was in that context.
Hi FatBoy...
I blog-hop and came upon yrs. Juz wondering... if i wanna add colouring to the fondant, at which stage do i do tat? abd after i've done up wadeva i wanted to do with the fondant, do i need to wait for it to dry up? and how long does that need?
TIA... sorrie tat i commented here so late after you've posted this.
baking fiend, u're supposed to add coloring after you've made the actual fondant, which is why they recommend paste, which wont dilute the composition. but what the heck, i just add the coloring. if you know from the onset what color you want, you can add it with the liquid solution i guess.
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