Ok newbie cake decorator here 
and I have a novice question. What is the difference between gumpaste and sugarpaste? What is each good for?
I have read alot of posts about these two products and have gotten more and more confused.
Thanks for all the help.
Heather
sugarpaste i think is another word for fondant. it is used for icing cakes and making decos and borders and things. gumpaste is similar to fondant except without any of the softening ingredients (shortening and glycerin). it dries very hard, and is great for decos that you don't expect any one to eat. you can also use a 50/50 mixture of both to make deco's. hth
I've always thought that sugar paste was the same as gum paste. I know I've recently read that also in a cake decorating book--whether that's the case, I'm not sure. I actually refer to my gum paste figures as sugar paste because I think it sounds prettier
in "cake walk" by margaret braun, she calls fondant sugar paste. she even says in the book that she knows a lot of people call it fondant, but she does not. thats the only place i've heard the term sugarpaste.
I just remembered where I had read that gum paste and sugar paste were the same-- it was baking911.com---here's the blurb...
Gum paste, also known as sugar paste, pastillage or sometimes called candy clay, is used for making all kinds of fancy decorations, such as long-lasting flowers, ribbons, bows, leaves, and just about anything else you can imagine. It has a long and interesting history and has been used by confectioners to make edible decorations since the late medieval period. Today it is quite popular with cake designers.
Anyway, I'm sure Margaret Braun knows what she's talking about too in Cake Walk---maybe its just one of those gray areas. ???
From what I can tell, some people use 'sugarpaste' and 'fondant' interchangably while other do the same with 'sugarpaste' and 'gumpaste'. I think when you see 'sugarpaste' in reading about a cake, or hear the word when speaking/listening about cake decorating, you have to find out how it was used in order to determine to which the author or speaker is referring.
JMHO.
Although it appears to be already cleared up, just my 2 cents. Fondant and sugarpaste are the same thing. Most people in the US call it fondant while those in the UK usually call it sugarpaste. One way to make gum paste (which dries hard) is to add gum tragacanth (sp?), gum arabic, tylose, etc. to fondant/sugarpaste. With all due respect to Baking911, even pastillage and candy clay are a little different than either fondant/sugarpaste or gum paste.
It's funny. I always thought what kbrown99 said was the case, but before my last post I did a Google search for sugarpaste, and wouldn't ya know it, but there were plenty of sites that came up saying sugarpaste, aka gumpaste......
Who knew? That's why I think that it doesn't matter what side of the pond you're on, people call it what they want.
Yep, there's that mud again.
And then there is Marzipan....is that more of the same?
Marzipan is much easier to define than the others. It's almond paste mixed with sugar, etc. BUT, it is also used for modelling, though it doesn't usually get as hard as what I call gum paste and is still very edible. Of course, you probably already knew that and were just teasing. 
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