Looking for some advice as to what I am doing wrong when attempting to paint on fondant . Whenever I attempt to paint on fondant I have issues with the color not staying on the fondant. It seems to separate and sometimes completely disappear. What am I doing wrong?
How are you painting it on? You should be mixing the color with a clear alcohol or extract, I use vodka. Make sure its not too liquidy/runny when you mix it and just paint it on.
Thank you for your reply, I do use vodka that's why I am so puzzled with my outcome. I was wondering if maybe I needed to prep my fondant in any way before I applied the paint.
There's not really anything you can prep to paint, you don't want a wet surface or anything, its got to be completely dry. Hard to know for sure but I'm thinking either you are not adding enough petal dust to the vodka so that it is too thin or there is something wrong with your petal dust.
Nanholland, I don't think I've ever painted on a cake with a petal dust mixture. I use either a gel color/vodka combination or straight airbrush color. Petal dust is not concentrated enough (or you would need a ton of it) to look right. If you want to highlight what you've painted after the fact, then apply dry petal dust on top of what you've already painted.
The trees on this cake were painted with non diluted super black airbrush color, using a very thin paintbrush: http://www.sweettierscakery.com/#!Teen%20Wolf%20Birthday%20Cake/zoom/c18h4/imageevu
The castle in the background was diluted with vodka to get a shade of grey. You can basically use any colors that way, and even mix.
Hope that helps,
Frank
Thank you Frank and Reginaherrin for your help. I am definitely going to try making my paint thicker to see if that helps. I was also wondering if it could be a possibility that having shortening on my hands when I knead my fondant could be causing my problem?
Thank you Frank and Reginaherrin for your help. I am definitely going to try making my paint thicker to see if that helps. I was also wondering if it could be a possibility that having shortening on my hands when I knead my fondant could be causing my problem?
Shortening is oily so that could be a problem but I've found you can actually use lemon juice instead of alcohol as it evaporates fast also and that's the only reason why they say to use alcohol instead of just water but use bottled lemon juice as it's more concentrated
In my experience, lemon juice does not dry nearly fast enough. If you don't want to use vodka, you can use lemon extract.
I've tried it with both vodka and lemon juice and I find the lemon juice dries much more sticky than the vodka.
Vodka is more expensive, but a little goes a looong way. I've used it two or three times now and it's gotten better each time. It's worth practising with some off cut fondant, adjusting the thickness to how you want it.
Use airbrush color and don't bother diluting it if you can help it, but if you do, use vodka. Sometimes if there's shortening on the surface, like was mentioned before, that can make the color bead up because you're basically trying to paint a water-based paint on top of an oil.
You can use titanium dioxide, which is the white food color, as a base to make paint. You can also mix shortening or icing with petal dusts or powder colors to make an oil-based paint.
Here are some articles I've put together about painting on cakes that could be helpful. http://acaketorememberva.blogspot.com/2013/05/tips-for-painting-on-cakes.html
http://acaketorememberva.blogspot.com/2010/09/painting-on-wedding-cakes.html
http://acaketorememberva.blogspot.com/2014/10/how-to-make-opaque-paint-for-gumpaste.html
well speaking as someone who doesnt like to us any product with alcohol in it for food or cake decorating (i even use imitation vanilla) then i dont mind waiting the extra little bit for the lemon juice to dry it may take longer but it still doesnt end up soggy like if you used water
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