Okay, so I was making my homemade fondant last night to cover a cake for Sunday. No biggie, I do this all the time. HOWEVER, I decide to make a chocolate flavor to go with my fudge-filled cake! I use cream cheese, powdered sugar, cornstarch, corn syrup, vanilla and almond flavoring to make my REGULAR fondant, so I figure I'll sub in some cocoa for my corn starch and leave out the almond flavoring. I also nix my clear vanilla in favor of my Madagascar Bourbon vanilla.

It.was.horrible.

I was mixing and mixing, and decided to taste and see if it needed more sugar. *bleah* I take some to my DH, and tell him it's chocolate fondant. He says, "It's sweet, and not entirely un-chocolate..." I ask, "Would you eat it AGAIN?" He slowly shakes his head no... Poor guy, he doesn't want to hurt my feelings, but I just wanted to know if my initial thought was shared by someone else. I guess it was.

So my thoughts are, maybe the bourbon vanilla is too strong a conflicting flavor to add to the chocolate... Maybe I added too much cocoa? Because I've had chocolate cheesecake, and it's delectable! This, however, wasn't working... Perhaps I should melt choco chips and add? How best to do that?

Anyone got any thoughts?

I made my own chocolate fondant by mixing melted dark chocolate and cocoa powder into regular bought fondant (pettinice) for the 3D Jawa cake in my photos - it was delicious! I did have some problems with it being a little dry at first, so I added in some vegetable fat and glycerine and that helped it a lot. So, I would suggest kneading in some melted chocolate (but be aware this is MESSY!!!).

Try chocolate plastique (not sure if that spelling is right). Tastes like a tootsie roll.

Thanks for the ideas!

I went back and revisited my original recipe, but I swapped out the cocoa I'd used in the first batch for the Hershey's cocoa I NORMALLY use. I also went back to my clear vanilla, and used my normal brand of powdered sugar instead of the off-brand I'd tried...

It.was.DELICIOUS!

I'm thinking the combo of sub-par cocoa and the Madagascar Bourbon vanilla just spelled disaster. However, using the SAME recipe with DIFFERENT BRANDS of ingredients, it turned out GREAT! The cake was a hit... I may try these ideas on a later one, though! Thanks again!

cakenator, what is chocolate plastique?
Kristina

Its basically semi-sweet chocolate chips and corn syrup melted together to make like a chocolate fondant. Its pretty tough to work with though.

Ah, I've got a recipe for that, but it's called Modeling Chocolate... Good idea, though! I plan on trying that SOMEDAY... I just need to do more cakes is all! (I just don't need all the WEIGHT I'd gain... )

Thanks cakenator...Last week I covered my first chocolate fondant cake 16, 12 and 8 square. I made my own white fondant and mixed in chocolate Pettinice. The flavor was soo good. The texture was something else. I got tiny cracks all over the surface and when I tried to cover the cake the corners ripped open like mad. Eventually I was able to massage most of the cracks out, but the big cracks were not a pretty sight. What was wrong with my fondant. I added soo much crisco to get it lubricated and some water. I even misted the finished cake and wrapped it in saran wrap to give some added moisture. I have another order in two weeks and I'm dreading it.
Any words of wisdom you can give me?
Kristina

What kind of fondant do you make? (mmf or original)

I make original. I use gelatin, glucose, a little melted Crisco, flavoring, and powder sugar.

sounds like it was too soft - maybe not adding so much crisco would help