Hi everyone! I recently made a big batch of fondant flowers (very thin) and let them dry in the flower former (plastic thing) to dry. Everything looked great and I put them on SMBC frosted cupcakes the night before to save time. Well, in the morning the flowers softened and thus lost their shape and just sagged :< . It was quite humid out, but I kept them in a cool place. To avoid this happening again, I'm trying to figure out what the problem was.......would gumpaste "sag"? was it because it went on SMBC? Thanks for anyone who knows!!!!!

i decorate with smbc and fondant and gumpaste decorations.
i did many practice runs with gumpaste and fondant (and refrigeration too) to see what worked for me and what didn't. you can put them on in advance successfully.

there are several points of view on this practice and i can only tell you what has worked for me.

did you cover you cupcakes after you put the fondant flowers on? if so, that was probably the culprit. the moisture had no where to go but right into the fondant.

if your flowers were not bone dry, and i mean completely DRY, then putting them on in advance, usually does not end well.

as far as gumpaste flowers go, i have kept dry gumpaste flowers on smbc (both fridged and room temp) for 3-4 days without sag. and if pressed, i would probably do gumpaste flowers over fondant if i was going to be doing in advance, because truthfully no one is going to eat them and the gumpaste dries better.

diane

Oh, yes--what Diane said !

Pure fondant flowers have to be bone dry--and even then they can soak up moisture quickly if it's very hot & humid.
They'll hold up best on a crusting decorator's buttercream if put on in advance, but on a non-crusting or meringue buttercream, they're just little sponges.

Gum paste flowers that are very dry will do a bit better, but again, moisture & heat can be a problem.

The best thing to do is to not place them on untl the last moment possible.

Rae

Thanks! Yes, I did cover them (in the cupcake carrier) and that was probably the issue. Thanks for the input....more lessons learned :>

if they were straight fondant instead of gumpaste flowers that could be the problem too. I've done several fondant items that went soft on bc, where 100's of gumpaste items stayed hard
HTH