Making fondant in the commercial kitchen with a mega-mixer. Here, I'm using the dough hook attachment and making about four pounds of fondant.
Most bakers use a commercial fondant to cover their cakes because making fondant from scratch can be a huge challenge. But, those commercially produced fondants are filled with … well … fillers that change the flavor of the fondant and I believe are the reason you see people peeling the fondant off of a perfectly yummy piece of cake. Most candy confectioners will make their own fondant to control the flavor for this very reason.
I bought some commercially produced fondant to test batch with and I was immediately turned away because I didn’t like all of the ingredients: icing sugar, glucose, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, water, artificial flavour, gum tragacanth, glycerin, celluose gum, modified starch, potassium sorbate, acetic acid, titanium dioxide and vanilla flavor.
They lost me at tragacanth … what the heck is that???
The recipe I use is very simple: water, sugar, corn syrup. Why corn syrup? It helps prevent crystallization of the sugar — a bad thing that makes the fondant crunch with large sugar crystals. This is bad and not what you want. You can also use lemon juice or cream of tartar to prevent the crystallization. I stick with corn syrup because I know that it works.
I found this recipe online that is very similar to mine: http://candy.about.com/od/fondantcandyrecipes/r/basic_fondant.htm
I read the reviews and some of them are very bad. The reason isn’t the recipe it’s all in technique.
First, you don’t want to cook the fondant past soft ball stage which is 240 degrees F. It’ll take a bit of time to get your temp up to 240, but be patient and DON’T stir the fondant. You don’t want any sugar crystals forming on the sides of your pan.
* When you put the ingredients in the pan start with the water, then the sugar and then the corn syrup. If you feel you need to stir, you can at this point but be careful not to splash the sides of the pan.
* Use a wet pastry brush throughout the cooking process and wipe down the sides of the pan to remove any stray sugar crystals that appear because of the boiling.
* Once you get to 240 degrees F then pour the hot sugar water onto a jellyroll pan with sides. Once it hits the pan don’t touch it, don’t mess with it, just leave it be. You want to let it rest at room temperature until it reaches 110 degrees F.
* I read a recipe that says sprinkling a bit of water of the top of the fondant will help to prevent crystallization. I do this, I’m not sure it helps, but it usually feels like I’m “blessing” the fondant so I say a little prayer while I do it. Can’t hurt.
Once it gets to temp you’re going to start working the gel into a mass. It will be messy and sticky. I use a mixer — the first times I made fondant I did it by hand, but it put me into a carpal tunnel brace for a week. Then I used my KitchenAid mixer — I have to admit that it nearly burned out the motor (it started smoking). Now, I use the mega-commercial mixer at the commercial kitchen that I work in. No smoking yet and I’ve quadrupled the recipe to make several pounds of fondant at a time. (Note, don’t do this at home. You’ll need a new mixer.) Oh, and use the dough hook attachment, not the paddle or the beaters.
If the fondant gets so hard that your mixer starts smoking (like mine did) then add a bit of warm water to turn it back into a paste. I have not found a recipe that says to do this, so I’m certain it’s against confectionary law. But, here’s the thing — it’s worked for me on several occasions.
Let the machine knead the mass until it gets sticky — you’re almost there! Keep kneading.
You’re done when the fondant holds together and is a paste — not like toothpaste, just a bit more “together” and not so “sticky”.
Pull the fondant out and put it in a zip top bag. It can be stored at room temp, or the fridge or the freezer. Freezing will allow it to last the longest.
Now, you can flavor it with extract or use invertase (an enzyme that converts the sugar into a liquid form) and make cordial cherries or chocolate liquor fillings.
I am super excited to be a girlfriend guru at Girlfriendology.com. I’ll be writing guest blog posts for them monthly and that should give me a good kick in the pants to up my posts here. I’m well into preparation of chocolates for Mother’s Day and the holiday has taken so much of my time lately, I’ve barely made it online.
