Hiya

Can anyone offer advice on what happening to my cakes.

I bought a new ready made fondant from my cake supplier, its called COVAPASTE and is just like ready made fondant but has a vanilla flavouring.

I made and decorated my cake on thur/friday. It was a 2 tier(second tier was only 6') and didnt use a cake board between layers. On Sat i received a message from customer to say that the icing was falling off. I collected the cake and it was disasterous awful looking!!

The icing was a soggy runny mess, it was really soft, both top and bottom tier. I had to completly re-ice the cake, taking off all the gloopy icing.

At first i thought that the cake has been left in her kitchen while cooking so its melted. I then contacted my prev customer that i used that icing on and she said the same that it was a bit runny.

I definatly wont use it again, but why did it go like this?? its as though its absorbed all the moisture out of the cake. The cake was decorated cool so i know thats not what caused it.

Im really worried about doing anymore cakes,

any ideas?

PS this is a pic when it left me

thanks

Jane

I'm not sure why that happened. I just wanted to tell you that the cake looks awesome

So the icing underneath the fondant melted? Or the fondant melted?
What kind of icing? What are the ingredients in the icing? And what are the ingredients in the fondant?

I see this is a UK product, so we'll probably need to wait for the UK folks to see the post. However, from Covapaste's own advertising it says it's a "softer" sugarpaste than other brands. Says it's easier to work with than Regalice. Having worked with Regalice myself, I can say that's a good thing.

Also you absolutely needed to use support and a cardboard under that top tier.

i was just reading up on this and came across this piece of info


COVAPASTE absorbs colours beautifully making it the only sugar paste you need for all your celebration and novelty cakes. Ideal for covering or modelling, easy to handle and work, ready to use and easy to roll out with no cracking or tearing. Soft to eat and will not dry out. May be over-wrapped if required Vacuum packed in convenient 2.5Kg size Accepts colours easily NB The addition of colours or compounds will soften the COVAPASTE, it is recommended to leave the product once coloured for at least four hours or add a little icing sugar before working.

It says the Paste will be soft to eat and wont dry out, This could be your problem, especially with the heat weve had this week, And if the person kept the cake in a fairly warm room ,it could have made the already Soft icing, Too soft!

thanks for your replys

Must just be because the icing is so soft that it 'melted' however when i was working with it, it was slightly more firmer than regalice.

Learn by mistakes

I use either covapaste or regalice covering paste which is different to the regular regalice and I've never had a problem with either, though they are both more gummy than the regalice. I did however notice that when I was making fondant flowers and coloured the paste it made it softer and much more gummy than usual so I left it to air-dry for about 15 minutes after I coloured it and it was much better to work with.

How's the humidity been in your part of the world lately? I live on the coast and I always have to do a little advance prep with my fondant to keep it from doing just what you describe. I add about 1/4 teaspoon of CMC (tylose) to every 250 grs of fondant and let it ripen for a couple of hours, covered. If it still seems like it will be too soft to work with, I add a teaspoon or two of powdered sugar to stiffen it up a little more. Maybe that would work for you, too. That's really a beautiful cake, by the way. I LOVE that red!

Could it be because you didn't use a cake board under the 6"?...

It still looked great though. Beautiful cake.

Jen

What is under the icing? I'm wondering if the buttercream is affecting the icing at all, especially if it only happens with covapaste and not your normal brand. Buttercream here is literally just sugar and butter and we don't tend to put a thick layer on the cake before the fondant goes on.
Otherwise, if it is warm and humid at the moment that is the only other thing I can think of because I generally find that the icing dries on the outside quite quickly after I put it on a cake.

I got this paste when it was on special too! I had a nightmare with it when it was very hot (that weekend when it was boiling in may), trying to cover a fourteen inch wedding cake. Every time i went to pick up the sheet of icing on my rolling pin, it just broke and drooped and cracked. In the end I added tylose to it as suggested above and it was a bit better. However, once it was on it was fine, I had two cakes, one a fruit which had marzipan under it, and one was a madeira which had buttercream (butter and sugar only). Both sat for a few days while i decorated, and I didnt get any problems with melting. Very strange. I wonder if you have a bad batch?

Ive used it since on several cakes and havent had any issues with melting, I have a cake sat on my table now that Ive iced with it and its ok so far. though I did notice it certainly doesnt go hard after a few hours like the other sugarpastes do.

I am nearly finished my batch now, thank goodness, I do find it a bit of a pain to work with, im back to the "trade" white one from cake stuff (is that where you got yours from?) which ive had before and found to be much better!

I don't know, I've just iced a cake with this and the humidity here is really high at the moment and I am not having any problems with it other than it being a little more sticky than usual.

I never pick the sheet up with my rolling pin, especially for big cakes due to the stretch and softness of the icing. I literally slide my hands, slowly, palms up, under the icing and gently lift it over the top of the cake. Also I roll the icing ever so slightly small and never ice a cake on a turntable as it does stretch and tear if you roll it too big.

I do admit it is a little more difficult to handle but so many people who say they don't like fondant really like the taste of this (me included) which is why I use it over others.

I wonder if I over kneeded mine, as I was trying to cover a fourteen inch cake - the piece of icing was so massive!! It didnt help that I didnt have a very long rolling pin - it was doomed from the start really!! The cake ended up with a few extra flowers to hide the mistakes!! Ive tried picking up icing by sliding my hands under and always end up putting myfingers through it....you must be less heavy handed than me lol. I think sometimes I roll the icing too thin so it breaks quite easily. I do ice on a turn table and agree that if your icing is too big it encourages it to tear.

I have a box of the icing i had before the covapaste to use next, so it will be interesting to see how it compares inthe heat!

That's weird I always find it the other way around. Regalice does that on me so I ALWAYS use Covapaste.

I don't use any of those brands I think UK branded sugar paste is awful!! I use Carma Massa Ticino, which is quite expensive (about £50 for 5kg) but I roll it so thinly that it lasts for ages and it is AMAZING!! I would say that if you can justify buying it then do!!! You can get it from Town & Country Fine Foods

Hi everyone!

I'm new on here and brand new to decorating with fondant icing. I made a 3-tier cake using white Covapaste ready-made fondant bought from www.cake-stuff.com for a wedding yesterday and the exact same thing happened on ALL 3 TIERS

They looked amazing when I boxed them all at 02:00, but when I checked them at 07:00, they had all started oozing thick white syrupy goo that resembled runny marshmallow mix from the bases (EXACTLY like in the photo of the ruby/white cake in the first post here). The icing still looked good at this point, but when I got to the venue to assemble the cake at 11:00, all 3 tiers had oozed more and started drying out/small cracks & holes appearing, with more goo oozing from them.

I had no idea what I'd done wrong or how the hell to fix it at (literally) the eleventh hour, so just stacked and decorated the cake (ribbon around bases, marshmallows cascading down from the top to bottom), and hoped it would survive, but spent the entire wedding ceremony fretting about it collapsing (I was also a guest as it was my Auntie's wedding, therefore really important to me to make her a nice cake).

When the wedding party got to the venue around 16:00, the first thing I did was check my cake. It had survived luckily, but the florist hadn't bothered to put the flowers on it - she'd just dumped them and left!!! Luckily the staff were amazing and kept the other guests away/found me some scissors etc so I could do the florist's job (another first) as I didn't want my Auntie to be disappointed or to even know anything about it. The layers were still oozing and one noticable crack had appeared right at the front, but it was ok if you didn't look too closely, and fortunately no-one noticed and all I got was compliments.

I thought I had done my research really well and that Covapaste was designed not to dry out or crack. I can't find any mention of this oozing goo issue anywhere else on the net so although this was my very first attempt (at a wedding cake, tiered cake, and decorating using fondant), and whilst I was lucky to avert total disaster this time, I'm not sure I can accept another order until I know why this happened and what I did wrong.

I hope someone can help