I'm making a volcano cake this weekend, and the lava is just tinted piping gel. There's a lot of lava on the volcano, but is it going to be okay to eat? It just looks very unappetizing.

Jennifer

It has no taste, just like a non flavored jelly type thing going on.

Kind of tastes like clear corn syrup, just sweet with not much flavor.

My .02 on this stuff is that it's gross (both taste and texture) in large quantities (more than a #5 tip dot), to me. It also gets rubbery the longer it sits or if it gets very cool. To my taste buds, it's actually somewhat bitter--sorry.

If it's possible, I'd suggest using thinned buttercream in various colors of red, orange, and yellow.

Rae

I don't care for it in mass doses, either. I was facing the horror of using it once to fill a "swimming pool" and used jello instead.

I find it nasty on its own. Corn syrup is sweet, piping gel isn't sweet so much, it has an odd tang to it. But i found that over other icing, such as buttercream or flavored fondant it had no apparant taste, it just picked up the underlying flavors of the buttercream and fondant.

Doug was kind enough to share a link with us that uses sugar for the Lava - I am not sure if this is what you are looking for or if a subsitute is an option but here is a link to his original post.
Good luck It sounds like a great project.


http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopicp-1169351-volcano.html#1169351