Colouring Fondant - A Quick Tutorial

Right, now for colouring fondant. Firstly pick a gel colour. As I've mentioned before, only use gel colours for colouring fondant as the water based colours mess with the structure of the fondant.

For this example, I have chosen "Poppy Red" by sugarflair as I am aiming for a pink. You can add more of the gel to get a stronger colour, but to get the bright or deep colours you may want, I would recommend with buying the pre coloured fondant or add some to the fondant, and the paint a layer of the colour over the top to achieve a darker red.

Take your fondant and add some of the gel with a cocktail stick (don't add a lot otherwise you'll get more on your hands than on the icing!

Now you will need to knead the fondant until the colour is incorporated.

Warning - your hands do get stained and it is hard work!!

It does get a little streaky, and I would recommend adding a little more colour at this point (again to save your hands ffrom the start)

As you incorporate it more, it will look a little marbly, which is ideal if you want to add a marble effect to your cake.

After a while, it will become the same colour all over. As I said, I was aiming for a pink, so this is how I've left it.

Plaques

Hello!

In week two of my course, we learnt how to make "plaques" for cakes.

Now, whats a plaque you may ask? Basically a plaque is a piece of hard icing with either a figure, animal, words or numbers on. They can be flat, or 3D.

Now, the plaque I made in class wasn't too great as I didn't have access to all of my tools, so these are the two I made at home. I used the Dr Oetker pre coloured modelling icing for this, but you can use normal fondant icing with a small amount of either tylo or gum tragacanth.

The basic receipe for using tylo powder is 1/2 tsp per 250g of fondant. This needs folding in and kneading into the fondant until it becomes quite stretchy.I would always recommend when it comes to colouring the fondant you use the gel colours (Asda do a small range and they are currently 2 for £3 (as of 02/03/12)). Add this using a cocktail stick as you really don't need a lot! I will do a little tutorial on colouring icing soon! Warning - your hands get pretty messy and stained!

These are my attempts at plaques. You'll see they are sitting on white icing bases, and this is the plaque base to put onto the top of the cake.

Not to shabby for a first try!! I may attempt a pig at the weekend, so I'll upload that too, with maybe a tutorial on how to do it.

I have prepared the photos for the fondant rose tutorial, I just need to upload them which should be done over the weekend, so come back and check!

Speak soon.

Kim.x.