Learning how to color fondant doesn’t have to be a chore! It can be stressful when you need certain colors. The right ingredients mixed with the fondant give you the opportunity to create exactly what you want. It opens new ideas and concepts too for your cake-decorating projects.

Understanding how to color fondant will help you gain confidence and branch out with your cake-decorating ideas. Food coloring is the easiest method I have found. It is inexpensive and easy to work with. Food gel is also an option to get your desired color. It costs more but doesn’t make the fondant as sticky.

I hope you will continue to read because I have plenty to share with you on how to color fondant and get the best results including:

· Adding food coloring to the fondant

· Adding food gel to fondant

· Using gum paste and fondant together

· Fondant bulk purchase to save money

Adding Food Coloring to Fondant

Fondant is a wonderful product to use in the process of decorating cakes. You can use it in place of icing. You can use it to create unique elements and details for your cake. The possibilities are unlimited, but you need to know how to correctly add food coloring to the fondant so the color is even and exactly what you want!

Work the fondant before you add any color to it. You want it to be soft and pliable. Kneading it into a ball is the best way to accomplish this. Guage how much fondant you will need of a given color before you work with it. It is better to have an excess of the color you want than not enough! The more you decorate cakes, the better you will be at estimating how much fondant you need for a specific project. In the meantime, don’t stress yourself out over it, learn as you go!

Add a few drops to the fondant and fold it until the color is completely mixed in and evenly distributed. Make sure you have a large enough batch for the color you need because it will be difficult to get that exact same shade if you need to make more to finish the cake. If you need more food coloring to get your desired color or to evenly cover all the fondant, add it a few drops at a time. Don’t be in a rush to complete this process, patiently fold and fold your fondant to give the color time to mix with it.

Adding Food Gel to Fondant

The same method as above will be applied here, you are just changing the type of product you add to color the fondant. The more food coloring you add to fondant, the stickier the substance becomes! If the color you desire requires lots of it, go with a better alternative. Food gel is more expensive than food coloring, but it will get you deeper tones of colors with less added.

A small amount of food gel goes a long way, so don’t add a glob of it, start with a few dots of color.  Add a small amount of it with a knife or with a toothpick and then fold and fold the fondant until it is blended well. Add more of the gel until you get your desired color. Don’t worry if you want a deep blue or vibrant green, you can achieve it with the use of food gel added to the fondant. You may still find that the fondant is sticky though, and that makes it harder to work with.

As a side note, you can add color to fondant a few days in advance. I often do this to reduce the time it takes me to decorate my cake. I plan it out and then add the food coloring or the food gel to the fondant. I put it in plastic bags and store it until I am ready to decorate my cakes. I love the decorating process, but breaking it down into segments fits my schedule. I prepare my fondant colors a few days in advance and bake my cakes the day before. On the day I want to put my cake together, everything I need is ready to go!

Using Gum Paste and Fondant Together

As I mentioned above, adding food coloring or food gel to fondant can cause it to become sticky. I know some people add cornstarch to it to reduce this outcome. A better solution I have found is mixing the fondant with gum paste. Go 50/50 with each of them and thoroughly mix. Add in the coloring until you are happy with the way it looks.

Fondant is softer but the gum paste is sturdy. When you mix the two of them together, you will be pleasantly surprised with the ability to manipulate the mixture to create what you wish with it. This is a great idea if you have detailed decorations you plan to make for the cake. They will be easier to create and last longer when you mix these two products.

It is a tip that has made my cake decorating faster, easier, and more fun than ever before! I often refer to this mixture as edible glue! There is a learning curve involved with cake decorating, and you will find what works well for you along the way. I have had some disasters I can laugh about now, but there was nothing funny about it in the moment! This one change has helped me create cakes I am proud of rather than ones that turn into a messy nightmare before my eyes!  

As a side note, investigate the quality of food coloring and food gel products before you buy them. Some of them are remarkable and others will leave you disappointed. I have learned that many of the more expensive products don’t work better than those moderately priced.

Fondant Bulk Purchase to Save Money

While you can buy colored fondant, it is expensive. This can increase the investment in a cake. It doesn’t make sense to buy a box of colored fondant if you don’t need to use much of it either. Yet those fine details make the difference when you decorate a cake. My solution is to buy fondant bulk products.

You will pay less overall, especially if you frequently decorate cakes. Buy a variety of food coloring and food gel items. The bulk product should be white fondant, and then you can create the colors you want without much time or money involved to do so. Conduct research so you buy the right fondant for your climate. Too much moisture can make certain products hard to work with.

The quality of the fondant should influence your decision too! It isn’t all the same, and I learned that the hard way! I thought I was saving money, but, I wasn’t getting a great product to work with. It was a disaster and that is when I started buying fondant bulk products to save money on a product I knew would work well to create cakes in my climate. Make sure you properly store your fondant or it will be usable and you will have to through it away.

I use fondant that has a shelf life of 2 years and encourage you to read the information for a product before you buy that fondant in bulk. Some of the products only have a shelf life of 6 months, so it will depend on how much you plan to use soon. The brand and quality influence the shelf life. As a general rule of thumb, the longer the shelf life, the better quality of the product.

Compare the prices of quality fondant sold in bulk too. It may surprise you to discover the differences. The best way to compare prices when such products are sold in different quantities is to break them down. Take the total number of ounces and divide that by the total price to get the per-ounce cost.

If you shop for bulk fondant online, make sure you look at shipping costs too. Some retailers offer free shipping. Others charge high fees for it, and that cuts into the savings. Evaluate the cost based on quality and the total price. I save a great deal of money on fondant when I buy it in bulk and then store it until I am ready to decorate a cake. Then I take out what I need and tightly secure the rest of it to prevent it from getting too hard to use.

Conclusion

Use these tips on how to color fondant to help you save money, get the colors you desire, and love the cakes you complete! It is fun to try out new projects and explore options with the use of food coloring and food gel. Remember to add the colors to fondant and gum paste a little bit at a time until you get the perfect color!