Hi All~ I'm new to this forum thing, but anyone ever heard of or used Dessicant? It is for sale on Geraldine's Creative Cutters website and says that it is used to keep moisture off fondant cakes in the fridge. If this is true, this may be the best thing since....well....EVER!! Anyone familiar?

[Chem 101] A desiccant is simply a hygroscopic (which means moisture-attracting) substance that absorbs or adsorbs moisture (the difference is depending on whether the substance takes in water (absorbs) or traps water on its surface (adsorbs). [/Chem 101]

You know those little packets of beads that come with new shoes and new purses? Inside of those packets are silica gel beads. It is a desiccant, as it adsorbs water. Put enough of it in your fridge (or anywhere) and boom, no humidity.

However, I put fondant cakes in my fridge and have no moisture problems. I save the desiccant for boxes in which I store my gumpaste and fondant flowers.

duh.. well, thanks I did think that they might be just like those little beads. Chemistry was never a strong suit!

Baking is chemistry, so you will soon be a scientist, chock-full of all kinds of crazy information like that!

ha ha-
Just one more questions- what fondant do you use that it doesn't get all tacky? I use Satin Ice and it just seems to soup up on me- even when I'm just doing fondant detailing.

I've been using Satin Ice exclusively for the past several years, and I have noticed that the consistency varies from bucket to bucket, even when I order 3 or 4 buckets at a time. If your fondant is too soft, add powdered sugar to it and it should firm it up nicely. I have noticed that I need to do that, particularly when working with the dark chocolate Satin Ice and it's warm in the room.

When working on detailed fondant pieces, you can also add Tylose to the fondant, which will toughen it up a bit and enable it to dry hard.

Hi!
I don't have any advice to pass on regarding dessicant... just a wee bit of a story tied in to it.
This past Christmas my Hospitality classes were making spun sugar for our school's Christmas Cabaret event, and we needed to add dessicant to the bins where we stored our spun sugar decorations. I hadn't planned ahead for the dessicant (forgot!), hadn't ordered it off the internet soon enough (I live no where near a good cake supply store), so 6am the morning we made the spun sugar I stopped by our local Walmart store to ask if I could have the little packets out of the shoe boxes.

You should have seen the lady's face.
Once I explained everything, they were willing to let me have them. The only thing was, that they now remove the packets from the shoeboxes and throw them out. The night shift girl had done that, so I had to rummage through huge bags of garbage to get them. There I was, 6am at Walmart, with my head stuck in garbage bags looking for dessicant!
(Before you get grossed out, the garbage was only stuffing paper, a bit of styrofoam and dessicant, and the bags were see-through, so it wasn't thaaaaat bad!)

Anyways, If you'd like to see what the classes made i have a link here:

http://www.sweetopia.net/?p=90