Fondant Icing Without Gelatin:
While attending birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, bridal showers, and almost every occasion you will find beautiful cakes decorated according to the party theme or concerning the person’s choice. Cakes are a popular choice in celebrating every occasion from personal to corporate. Many popular baking shows are being aired on channels showing beautifully decorated cakes. Thinking about these cakes smooth seamless draped cakes image pops into our minds. This smooth covering is made out of fondant. You’ve probably heard the term fondant many times, but you may not be sure what it is? In this article, we will discuss what is fondant and How To Make Fondant Icing Without Gelatin? How it made and used? and how to make fondant without gelatin?
Fondant when used properly gives cakes a smooth, seamless cover that makes it an ideal new canvas for unlimited decoration options. The purpose of fondant is similar to other decorating mediums such as buttercream and traditional European marzipan. Though fondant has little flavor and is usually not very good to taste and is often removed from baked goods before eating.
Below, we explain what fondant icing is, what it’s made out of and its uses, and importantly how to make fondant without gelatin?
All About Fondant Icing Without Gelatin:
Fondant is simply an icing that is used to cover cakes and other baked goods. Usually, it is rolled into flat thin sheets and then draped over the cake’s surface to create a beautiful even presentation.
Qualities:
- Fondant icing is considered a star in decorating cakes. It gives fancy cakes that smooth, sleek surface and its ability to be molded into three-dimensional shapes makes it the favorite for cake artists.
- Another quality this coating possesses is that it can resist temperature changes better than buttercream. The blank canvas created with fondant for decorations is smooth and sleek.
- Fondant can also be used to create three-dimensional decorations. It can be used with molds or rolled to sculpt almost anything from flowers to different objects of one’s choice.
- Fondant comes in different colors and flavors, you can easily use food coloring and flavoring to customized plain fondant.
- This icing can be thinned into a liquid for dipping and pouring. Allowing bakers to prove a lot of creativity with their confections.
Because of fondant’s soo many qualities, it is considered a versatile icing and is chosen by many bakers for decorating purposes.
Ingredients For Fondant:
The basic ingredients for fondant are sugar, water, and corn syrup. There is more structures form of fondants are there which are used for sculpting, they consist of gelatin, which contains an ingredient, collagen that comes from animals. For a vegetarian-friendly fondant, agar agar powder is used which is a thickener that is obtained from seaweed. Some bakers also choose to use marshmallow fondant on their cakes, which are made from melted marshmallows, powdered sugar, and water.
Is Fondant Edible?
Looking at the ingredients mentioned above Yes, fondant is 100% edible.
- “fondant cake” generally means a cake that has been coated in fondant rather than buttercream or another icing. You must have seen many people remove fondant from their baked goods before eating it, this is because a lot of people don’t like the flavor and texture of fondant icing and it ruins the taste of cake for them.
How To Make Fondant Icing Without Gelatin:
As mentioned above mostly fondant icings contain gelatin which is a collagen derived from animal bones and therefore, it is not vegan friendly and non-vegetarian. Below is a recipe that is appropriate for both vegans and vegetarians. The replacement for gelatin in this recipe is agar-agar powder, which results in something equally as good as the fondant with collagen.
Ingredients:
- Agar agar powder
- Powdered sugar
- Glycerin
- Water
- Glucose
- Shortening
- flavoring
Look for food-grade vegetable glycerin and organic powdered sugar to make sure it is vegan and vegetarian friendly.
Steps To Follow:
- First, sift your powdered sugar through a fine mesh into a bowl. This will help remove all the clumps making the icing sugar easily incorporable with the other ingredients easily.
- Take cold water in a saucepan and stir the agar-agar powder with the cold water until it is dissolved. Let it sit for about 10 minutes. The mixture will thicken and become a gelatinous consistency.
- Heat the mixture over low heat making sure not to evaporate all the water. By heating over low heat, the mixture will dissolve back to a fluid consistency.
- Be patient as it would take a total of 10 minutes or so for the agar agar powder to completely dissolve.
- Now you mix in your glucose and shortening until dissolved followed by the glycerin and your choice of flavoring. Most traditionally vanilla extract is added for flavoring.
- Finally, add powdered sugar to complete the fondant. Don’t start with the full amount of confectioner sugar, place half of the powdered sugar in a separate bowl. Make a well in its center. Pour the agar mixture into the well and stir the mixture to combine, adding more powdered sugar as needed.
- Once the mixture becomes stiff and hard to stir transfer the fondant to a clean surface and start kneading with hand to obtain a smooth consistency and shape it into a ball.
- Your fondant is ready to use. You may use the fondant straight away or store it for later use.
- Remember to store properly to use later. wrap this Fondant in plastic wrap and place it in a sealable bag. You should keep the fondant at room temperature and don’t put it in a refrigerator.
- You may add food colors to get your desired color of fondant.