Noooo!! I mean, it makes cakes look really good, and adds design, but it tastes awful to me. It makes me wonder how people on cooking game shows win when there cake is completely covered in three layers of fondant.

Yuck.

No. It's rather sickly. I prefer ganache.

If you make your own fondant, you can add a bit of flavoring. I made marshmallow fondant once (found the recipe by googling) and really, it wasn't too bad--but I wouldn't want to eat a lot of it. It's mostly for a "wow, so smoooooth" factor on the cake, and to act as a base for a decorated, or highly decorated cake, from what I understand.

No. It's vile. I usually pick off the fondant and discard it.

No. My kids, who have no problem with a lot of junk food, do not even like it. I understand how nice it is for decorating purposes, but I generally think things should be more than just pretty. Alas, I am beginning to find traditional buttercream often too sweet for my taste buds now. I made swiss meringue buttercream for the first time recently and did love it.

Now, my funny fondant story. When my youngest was in second grade, we were driving home from school and he asked me what vomit tastes like. While somewhat confused, I responded with not very good. Then proceeded to ask what he was talking about, and his explanation led me to believe that after watching Nerdy Nummies and other baking shows, he was asking about the fondant used in cake decorating. Still gives me a chuckle.

Could you make a marzipan replacement to fondant? I am not much of a baker, so please forgive me if the answer is obvious.

Rita, I think marzipan would be good for figures and decorations but I can't imagine trying to roll out a big piece of it and using it to cover a whole cake. Some people, like Sol, are better than I am, though, I only play at making cakes. Fondant is fun, like using PlayDoh.

It tastes horrible, though. My homemade stuff is horrible too, although less horrible than Wilton, which is the worst. My grandkids actually eat the Satin Ice brand, they like it. I peel it off and throw it away!

I've made a lot of cakes with fondant for decorations. Ashley's wedding cake was fondant covered and I bought cake wraps, decorations that stick to the fondant and make patterns, those are easy and fun too. Amanda's wedding cake was frosted with buttercream, she didn't care about perfect appearance and wanted it to taste good.

I've made birch stump cakes and pigs in mud and purses and the kids help me. They aren't perfect but the fondant is fun to play with!

Annie

So, it's not just me! Thank-you all for your reports and especially for the what the kids will eat.

Sooz, I think the issue with flavoring fondant is that if there's sufficient flavoring agent, it affects the texture of the fondant, at which point one can do buttercream. :) Maybe an expert can do better, but I don't have any inclination to perfect flavored fondant. :) You'd think the bakeries would make it taste better if they could... Right? I like the idea, though.

Rita, I've seen people on TV roll out marzipan to fill between layers, and also to make panels that were like decorations on the outside of cakes (like the kitkats in Annie's picture), but I think it would take a lot of expertise to get it to drape without cracking or slumping. I might like to try modelling with marzipan. Make decors that taste good. :) I mean, a lot of people don't like marzipan, but lots love it.

I totally appreciate fondant for show pieces and theme cakes, like Annie's. I can consider it like the paper on a cupcake--decorative and meant to be thrown away. But I also remember how delicious and beautiful buttercream was when I was a kid, even if you had to keep the cake chilled. On commercial cakes, nowadays, the butter cream tastes like chemicals, which may just be the shortening, but isn't good, and the bakeries use fondant so exclusively that some of the bakers don't even know how to do pretty buttercream. Sigh.

I may have to take up cake decorating and get my buttercream abilities up just to have an edible frosted cake. But then I'd probably have to find a place (we're ignoring money) for a walk-in to work in, because it would just all melt in my kitchen. :)

I don't mind fondant....it's just sugar....if the flavoring is artificial, I mind that....but, just sugar fondant? It's fine!
I am still shuddering, thinking about one time I was checking out at the big supermarket with an in house bakery, and the person behind me had a 2 gallon bucket....I said.."Wow that's a lot of potato salad, you must be having a good party!" ( it was graduation time). "no" she said..."it's frosting, I make wedding cakes."
All I could think of was a bucket full of that awful stuff made with white shortening...EWW!

Annie, those cakes look awfully good!

plllog, you have me craving a nice buttercream frosted cake now - I think I may bake a simple cake tonight and frost it in the morning.

Rita, it's just like Play Doh, I'm telling you. You notice The Princess did a couple of those, she'll be 14 tomorrow. I've had no professional training other than a single Wilton cake decorating class, and a whole lot of You Tube. Some of my cakes look a lot worse than those, LOL, but I learn something every time.

And, like you, now I'm thinking cake. A nice hot milk cake, maybe, with caramel fudge icing. Since tomorrow is the Princess' birthday, that probably won't happen, she'll want Red Velvet or something, I'm sure. Ah well, I won't eat as much of it....

Annie

Fondant--ick! As someone in the wedding biz, I often hear everyone but the cake makers commenting on how weary they've become of fondant cakes, but they just seem to be spreading down to more and more informal events. I guess it's all part of the instagramization of food, where nobody cares about how food tastes, just how it looks. A good preparation for when food is 3D printed, I guess.

The first wedding cake I ever saw/tasted had gorgeous buttercream frosting with sliver dragees. It was just as pretty as 90% of the fondant cakes I've seen, and far better tasting.

ETA The last wedding I was at as guest, I noticed that everyone at the cake from the inside out. Most plates had a little shelll of empty fondant left on them.

Here where the traditional wedding cake is a fruit cake, you first cover the whole cake with a layer of marzipan before a layer of fondant. So it's possible :-)

Colleen, does the fondant hold the marzipan on? Or does it stand up by iteself on the sides?

Writersblock, that's a good word...instagramization. Some of the best tasting food in the world is fugly. :) Including desserts. That fondant shell on the plate is the way I eat it unless the host/ess made it and is looking and I'm trying to spare her/his feelings. (For Lars who (for good reason) doesn't like to have his gender excluded.)

Which reminds me: I used to attend conferences at this hotel/conference center where all meals were plated and served. The plates were gorgeous. The food looked lovely and appetizing. The breakfasts were mostly tolerable, the lunches were survivable especially if there was salad, and the dinners were inedible. Gorgeous served plates of disgusting, flavorless, inedible food. Luckily, sessions were usually done by 11:00 p.m. and the In-'N-Out Burger was only a mile away and open at least until midnight. That was barely into the cellphone age, first models past the brick, so way way before Instagram, but people would have been enticed by that beautiful food...

I get the preservation qualities of fondant, but why is smooth so good? Just to be different? Do we really need cakes that need to be steamed like silk blouses? I'd much rather a pretty basket weave or scalloped textured buttercream on a wedding cake. I guess I'm just not stylish anymore. :)

OTOH, silver dragees aren't nice to eat either, though very pretty. Thanks for teaching me to spell that, btw. I had thought it was -et. :)

I have a fondant rolling pin. I use it for other things...

Just thinking about Annie's reference to modelling with fondant being like using Play-Doh. Fondant is shinier and smoother, of course, but Play-Doh is edibile so one could use it to decorate a cake... Just sayin'.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for fondant. For concept cakes and ones that are meant to be part of the decoration, for sure. But for just cake?

Plllog, you brush the fruit cake's surface with warmed apricot jam, then mold a layer of rolled out marzipan over the whole thing, just as you would mold the fondant all rolled out in one piece. Then once your marzipan is all perfectly smooth you brush over the marzipan with water and smooth on the fondant layer. It's to smooth out the bumpy surface of the fruit cake- if there are any holes you fill them first with little blobs of marzipan.

Annie, I do like that Little Mermaid cake- the piping on the top and bottom edges is like waves :-)

Aha! Thanks, Colleen, for the explanation! I get the bump filling, :) And I also see how the jam would help keep the marzipan in place. :)

Annie, I promise, my musings weren't aimed at you. I do get it that the fondant is for special things, and worth it for the effect. What I meant was that I'm fine with it when the bakeries do that too. It's when a simple chocolate layer cake or carrot cake or similar is draped in fondant rather than frosted that I sigh for better days. (Yes, for the carrot, cream cheese rather than buttercream, but they're both frosting.)

Fondant is really far better suited for special occasion cakes, not everyday desserts. When my daughter and I were making Christening cakes, we flavored the fondant with a bit of almond extract and it made SO much difference. A fondant covered cake will usually have multiple layers of various fillings so that's where the true flavor comes from, and of course, from a really good cake.

For everyday baking, it's hard to beat a true buttercream frosting. If one wants something fancier, do an Italian merengue. It holds up better than the old Seven Minute Frosting of my childhood.

Another delicious special occasion frosting is marzipan. It's SO good! We used it on my daughter's wedding cake as we like the ecru color (like the antique lace veil that had been my late husband's grandmother's). We then used white sugar paste gardenias and lily of the valley. It was spectacular. And it tasted fabulous - multiple layers of yellow cake, some with raspberry jam and some with lemon curd.

Yum, Anglophilia, that sounds delicious AND beautiful.

Annie

Although I know what fondant is, I can't say for sure if I've ever eaten it. But if it's been served to me then yes I have! I'll gladly eat anything sweet. Someone at my wife's job comes in with fondant decorated cakes once in a while and I know she doesn't like it at all.

Annie, I've probably said this before but it's been fun watching your decorating skills develop over the years.

FOAS, thank you. YouTube is a wonderful thing, LOL, and somehow no matter how badly I mess up, the grandkids are always happy to eat my creations!

Annie