Ah, fondant, delight and bane of decorators everywhere. Most people complain it tastes awful (and some do), but it's exceptional for giving a smooth surface to a cake and keeping it moist and delicious.
This being 101, I am only going to give a quick overview of what fondant is and how to use it. Possibly in a later Cake 101 video, I will show how to apply fondant to a cake.
So what is it? It is a sugar and marshmallow (usually) mix that can be rolled out into sheets and draped over cakes or used to make cut-outs, flowers, borders, etc.
You can buy it premade (and pre-colored if you like) or you can make your own. You can color it by mixing the icing color in as you knead the fondant or you can airbrush or paintbrush color on later.
There are a million and a half tools out there to help you with fondant and to cut fondant, but I have found that cookie cutters work just as well as the specialized tools. The ninjas on the ninja carousel cake were from cookie cutters. I free-handed the sections on the carousel to match the sections on the carousel tops, and then rolled out fondant ropes to twist together.
The Guinness cake seen previously in the cake archive is covered in white fondant, which was then painted with a vodka and icing coloring mix. I used the same technique on the "fail" cake for threadcakes, and the movie camera cake. The border on the Guinness cake is just fondant balls rolled together.
Fondant can seem daunting, but like everything else, it's just practice practice practice. Next week, we'll talk gumpaste.
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