Adventures with Fondant

I wanted to make Red Velvet cupcakes for Jesse and Deidre Johnson's open house. Instead of doing my normal star-shaped frosting I wanted to test out fondant as the decoration. I recently purchased paisley shaped cutters from a famous baker in the UK by the name of Lindy Smith.

I'll be honest, fondant is a little tricky to get used to. I wore gloves because fondant sticks to your hands. The lady at Jane's Cakes and Chocolates said to use Crisco to make fondant easier to work with but I decided against it. I made sure that there was plenty of powdered sugar on my work surface and on my gloves. Fondant is kind of like play dough so it was fun to work with. I have gel frosting colors so I thought I would do red paisley cut outs with a smaller white paisley on top. I didn't like the way the red ones came out so I scraped that and made smaller pink paisley cut-outs.

Then I used a round frosting tip to cut out small white circles. In order to stick fondant pieces together you have to use a small paint brush dipped in water to adhere them.

I put six pink paisleys on each cupcake. They looked really nice although the whole process took me a super long time. My best friend, Jess, came over and had to help me finish the decorations. Thankfully, they were a hit at the open house.