Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Homemade Rolled Fondant Recipe- Vegan Option, No Specialty Ingredients, No Artificial Ingredients, Uncooked, Healthier




I make gluten free decorated cakes for people sometimes, as a side job. I make them as processed/unhealthy ingredient free as possible, with the only bad ingredient being white sugar for the frosting (because otherwise you can't really have a white base to work with). I had a cake I was supposed to make for tomorrow, and then at the last minute, I realized that I didn't know how on earth I'd be making the cake, as I typically make a coconut oil and powdered sugar buttercream style frosting, and as I type, my coconut oil is sitting in its container on my shelf, as liquidy as water. Not exactly frosting making material.
I was trying to figure out what to do instead of buttercream, came up with all sorts of ideas, but none of them exactly what I was looking for. Then someone suggested fondant.
I never made fondant before, because all fondant recipes called for all sorts of expensive specialty ingredients, or unhealthy ingredients, required a million steps and were very easy to mess up.

However, I'd remembered my friend Ewa talking about how easy it is to make homemade fondant, so I asked her for her recipe- she said powdered sugar, egg whites, and corn syrup, mixed together to make a dough. She wasn't able to give me exact proportions, but just told me to play around until I got it right.

Well, I knew I wouldn't be making it Ewa's way, because I don't use corn syrup. But I figured that honey has the same consistency, and I didn't see why it wouldn't work with honey instead.

And so I made it, and I think it came out amazingly! I am really excited about this!


A few days after making this the first time, I played around with this recipe, and made it with flax gel (flax seeds boiled with water until egg white consistency- recipe and uses for this in a future post hopefully soon) in place of the egg whites, and with a vegan syrup instead of the honey (I used date syrup) and it came out great!
Next time I want to try it with powdered coconut sugar.
But in the meantime, I am really psyched, and am already thinking about ideas how to make the perfect birthday cake for my sons' birthdays coming up next month.
By the way- if you're worried about the safety of raw egg whites- you can buy pasteurized egg whites, or use the flax gel.

So, here's how I did it. This quantity was enough to cover a large cake and still only use half of the fondant. If you're using a smaller cake, feel free to halve it.

Ingredients:
~9 cups powdered sugar
4 egg whites from small eggs or as much flax gel is needed
1/4 cup honey, or vegan syrup alternative- ideally as light colored as possible, as a darker syrup will make your fondant dark. Brown rice syrup, jaggery syrup, agave nectar, or even a simple sugar syrup should work.
Homemade beet food coloring- about 1 tablespoon

Instructions:
1. If you want white fondant, mix about 6 1/2 cups powdered sugar with 4 egg whites from small eggs or 2-3 large egg whites, and 1/4 cup honey.

2. Mix it very well, and try to get it to be a dough-like consistency. If you find it is too sticky, add more and more powdered sugar, 1/4 cup at a time until you have a good pliable, but non sticky dough.

3. Knead your fondant for a few minutes until it is smooth, then get to work.



4. However, if you want pink fondant, like I did, add the juice of 1/3 of a beet (I grated mine in the smaller blade on my grater, then squeezed the liquid out into a bowl using a cloth, and used that liquid) and then mix it in, and add more and more powdered sugar until it is once again a good pliable consistency that isn't too sticky. Altogether, I used about 9 cups of powdered sugar for this batch.



5. Once you have your fondant. roll it between two sheets of parchment paper, as thinly as you can. To prevent it from sticking to your parchment paper if it isn't 100% non sticky, sprinkle the parchment paper with more powdered sugar.

6. Cut the fondant into the shape you want, and put it over your cake. My client asked for a section of the cake to be frosting free, so I used a pizza cutter to cut my fondant into shapes, then draped it over the cake where I desired.
P.S. As I said, this is my first time ever using fondant, so I don't know how you're "really" supposed to do it.

7. I wet my finger a bit, and smoothed the seams between the fondant parts as best as I could. Then I used my pizza cutter to trim the excess fondant off the bottom of the cake.

8. With the extra fondant pieces, I made a rose by placing petals together into a rosette shape, then made green fondant by mixing in spirulina powder (and enough water so that it wasn't too dry). I made the stem of the rose by adding cocoa powder and activated charcoal to a fondant snake.

The cake was a hit, everyone loved it, and they said the frosting tasted great.

Oh- I did add writing onto the cake with royal icing afterward, but I didn't post the pictures with their names out of respect to my client's privacy.

I really can't wait to work with fondant again! It was honestly so much easier to work with than buttercream frostings, and it just looks so much better and more professional.

And best of all- it didn't melt in the heat!

Have you ever made fondant before? What was in yours? Does this seem like a recipe you'd try? 
Any tips to a new fondant maker, how to best work with fondant, or any youtube channels you think would be the most educational and helpful with that?

15 comments:

  1. The cake looks great! Just wondering, why didn't you just put your coconut oil in the fridge or freezer for a bit to harden it up?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was thinking of putting my coconut oil in the fridge, but when I do that, it becomes rock solid and hard to work with, for one. Additionally, between making the frosting and delivering the cake, in this extreme heat the coconut oil would have just liquified again.

      Delete
  2. Penny was that cake for a wedding or engagement party? It looks great!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Haha, not good enough yet to do engagement or wedding parties! :-D Thanks for the compliment!
    It was for an 11 year old's birthday party.

    ReplyDelete
  4. So creative, I loved reading this.

    ReplyDelete
  5. So curious to hear why they wanted the blank space...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. For some party attendees who don't do well with too much sugar- the cake was with coconut sugar, but the frosting white sugar, and they wanted a part of the cake without white sugar for those guests. :-D

      Delete
    2. It wasn't completely blank- part of the frosting free part had Happy Birthday written on it in royal icing. Just no fondant.

      Delete
  6. I've made fondant once. I used meringue powder in place of egg whites. Great job on the cake! :) I love reading your blog! :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. What an awesome idea 💡!!! I bet you could use brown rice syrup in place of the honey too! I would be interested to know if you have success using flax eggs, being vegan I wouldn't want to use the eggs 😊 pre vegan days, I would use marshmallows and powdered sugar to make fondant, always a hit with the kids it was yummy 😋 I like your rose too, very cute touch! Fondant is alot of fun once you get that consistency down!! Beth Gambee always posts really good tips and tricks on Pinterest, she is self taught, littledelightscakes.com

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi,
    I use ghee in my frosting. Comes out really well!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hi, great recipe! Could be the powder sugar replaced with powdered stevia?!
    Best regards, Cynthia.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I just made this with Swerve confectioners sugar replacement and golden light agave nectar. It turned out great! But it's not white... :/
    I'm going to color this batch and try again with another combo. Swerve, guar gum? And honey? Or agar agar? I'm new to binders/ thickeners so idk. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Also, I'm going to stick it in the fridge for a week before putting it on the cake.🤞

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for leaving a comment on your blog. Comments are moderated- please be patient to allow time for them to go through. Opposing opinions are permitted, discussion and disagreements are encouraged, but nasty comments for the sole purpose of being nasty without constructive criticisms will be deleted.
Just a note- I take my privacy seriously, and comments giving away my location or religion are automatically deleted too.