I'm new to the cake Decorating scene. I'm attempting to make my first "covered" cake. I opted to use modeling chocolate. Possibly more difficult but I need to refrigerate it. Read that its no good to do so with fondant. I purchased powdered food coloring online, I live in a very very very small town, only a walmart supercenter... I thought I'd be able to get red nd blue to make various shades of purple, however after trying several ratios of blue to red I'm only getting a horrible brown ish blue, ha I dunno! Ne help/advice is much appreciated!

Hi! Welcome to Cake Central! I'm not familiar with covering a whole cake with modeling chocolate so I checked out other posts and came across this one:

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-645906-.html

It may offer a few suggestions for you. As far as refrigerating goes, you'll find several different opinions. I put my fondant cakes in the fridge all the time and never have a problem.

For the colour, are you starting out with milk chocolate? If so, you won't be able to get purple - you'd have to start out with white chocolate and then use your colours to mix.

Good luck with your cake!

I started with the white chocolate... But I just can't get a decent shade of purple. After reading that you refrigerate fondant, I'm just going to go with that... Far more inexpensive. Thank you. When using a filling such as strawberries or a mousse, does it hold up underneath the fondant. Probably a superr amateur question....

If you go with fondant just make sure you don't touch it after taking it out of the fridge for a while. There will be some condensation on it which will need to evaporate.

I've done strawberries and whipped cream with no problems but I also try not to make my fondant too thick so it's not so heavy. In any case, make sure you use a very thick dam and don't put too much filling on - it'll ooze out and make a real mess!