Peggy Porschen Academy Part 4: Liquid Fondant Cupcakes
Liquid Fondant Cupcakes
To achieve the smooth, shiny finish on the Marie Antoinette Cupcakes the little pieces of heaven are dipped in liquid fondant.
Liquid fondant is widely used as a filling for chocolate truffles, as a glaze for pastries and, perhaps, is most commonly known as the cover of ‘French Fancies’. It can be flavoured with fruit juices, essences or liqueurs and with a white base it’s ideal for mixing brilliant colours.
Liquid Fondant can be made from scratch by boiling together sugar, glucose syrup and water, but it requires some precise temperature control and a lot of experience and skill to get the right consistency, so it’s much quicker and easier to use ready-made fondant.
Liquid Fondant Cupcakes Dipping Technique
To make our fondant workable we heated it up in a microwave on a medium heat for one minute, we then stirred and if it was too thick we’d heat again on 20 second intervals until it was on a thick pouring consistency.
Tip1 : Use a bowl that’s deep enough to take the whole cupcake
Tip 2: Do not let the fondant boil, otherwise it will lose its shine.
Once the consistency was achieved we added a small amount of Sugarflair Blue paste and an even smaller amount of Sugarflair egg yellow to the edge of the bowl and mixed in with the white fondant to create a mint-green colour.
Tip 3: Be careful! Add only a small amount of the paste colours as they go a very long way! Every single person in the room had a different shade of green or in some cases blue!
Then we take a cupcake, turn upside down while holding by its base and dip into the fondant. We have to wiggle it around to really get it covered and then lift it out, shake of the excess and put it aside to let it set.
We repeat this action for all the cakes and then go back to the first one and dip again to give it a second coat.
Watch Peggy Porschen’s dipping technique:
I had a couple of cakes that were either lopsided or didn’t quite meet the top of the case, so instead of dipping I had to spoon the fondant onto the cake and let it set.
Tip 4: Depending how many cakes you’re doing and how quick you are at doing them, you may need to re-heat your fondant again to get it to back to the right consistency.
Read how to add detail with Royal Icing in part 5 of my experience at the Peggy Porschen Academy.
