Dumb Question?? Difference Between Gumpaste And Fondant?
Decorating By Charlie_Fatster Updated 18 Aug 2006 , 3:59pm by jmt1714
Sorry guys, i'm new here and can't find my way around very well...so...here is my dumb question:
What is the difference between gumpaste and fondant.
there, i asked it, you can throw things if you like....lol... 
You can eat gum paste too but it tastes pretty crappy. 
I'm a bit of a newbie myself and I'm sure other can answer this much better. Fondant is typcially used to cover cakes although you can do modeling of figures with it. It just takes longer to dry. Gumpaste dries much faster and is used for make flowers and little figures and such. Gumpaste is technically edible although it doesn't taste good at all.
Not a dumb questions btw... I would like to know the correct way to pronounce 'fondant'...
Phonetically I say fondont but I hear people on tv say fon daunt or some crazy way....
I think fondant tastes horrible. Has anyone had any good tasting fondant?? do different companies taste different too?
hi charlie_fatster
you need to try mmf (marshmellow fondant) its easy to make and it tastes great.
go to the recipes and it should be there
kylie
Nah, the Wilton one tastes awful. The lovely thing about fondant is that it handles like clay. The crummy thing is, it TASTES like clay!
Although you can find this info via assorted searches here at CC, I'll clue your newbie self into one important difference that my newbie self discovered between horrible manufactured fondant and delicious MMF found here since I've used them both: MMF tastes fabulous (tastes like a dried up marshmallow) but doesn't dry fast so figure making is challenging. If you check out my zoo cake, I made all the animals with Wilton's but had white MMF on hand for the panda's head and body. After 4 days the panda never dried and his belly totally sagged into his legs. If you picked him up he still even felt squishy. I'd affixed his arms when I first made him, and you can't see from my photo but his whole body, in its downward descent due to gravity, actually moved away from his arms. Oops! I had the same problem w/my fish, which were ALL mmf...they all started out round and totally flattened out on the bottom over a few days. Regular fondant does this a bit, but not as much as MMF. But the nice thing about MMF is if you cover a cake with it, people could actually eat it and not gag.
I've learned that you can add gum-tex or gumpaste to (either) fondant to help alleviate this problem, but I haven't done it yet. Rest assured, next time I make figures I will. My guess is that gumtex-added MMF will still taste better than straight gumpaste or Wilton's fondant, but I haven't tested that theory.
I think you can prob. use the forum Search function to look up gumpaste and find out precisely what it is, but the other posters summed it up: it dries faster and harder so is more appropriate for decorations which need to dry in a specific shape like flowers, figures, etc. , esp. delicate flowers. I tried to make a MMF clam for my fish cake, drying each half over a spherical spoon, but they never, ever dried so I had to chuck it. Gumpaste would have worked. I haven't yet been able to determine how fast is "fast" i.e. how much time do you have to make decorations before your gumpaste turns to concrete? And I THINK it's more moisture resistant?? Like if you stuck a fondant snowflake into a cake, it would eventually collapse as the icing softened the fondant...but this wouldn't be a problem with gumpaste. DISCLAIMER: I don't know this for a fact so please, anyone, set me straight and slap me silly for acting like I know what I'm talking about.
I haven't tasted gumpaste yet but I do have the same info as everyone else, don't expect it to be a delightful treat. Technically edible, you just wouldn't want to eat it.
Gumpaste will dry faster and harder and you can make very detailed things with it. Most people will not eat it as it is as hard as a rock.
Fondant is like an icing that you can roll out and with gumtex in it will dry hard.
MMF can be used to make figures as I have done before and will dry hard. You can put gumtex in MMF but if I have time to let them air dry then I don't bother.
Wilton fondant taste horrible but everyone will eat the MMF on the cake.
CakeDiva73 ... here are a few threads on the pronunciation of fondant. It seems to be the age old question, though most here on CC seem to agree that "fon-daunt" is NOT the right way to say it!! 
http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-15302-pronounce.html
http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-26902-pronounce.html
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