Hi, I'm new here as well as new to cake baking. What is the difference between fondant and gum paste? I am making a cake for my son's first birthday and I am trying to get together all of the tips and tricks before doing so. What is fondant used for and what is gum paste used for?

Fondant is a rolled icing that is used as a cake covering and to make various decorations with. Gumpaste is an icing that dries very hard which is used to make decorative elements such as flowers.

Try using the search feature here - you will find hours upon hours of reading for questions like fondant vs gumpaste.

It all depends on what you need to do, maybe if you tell us your idea we can tell you what's better for you but Cakepro's answer is right, I can't add anything

I am making a ladybug/bumble bee cake for his "Bug" themed party. So I pretty much need to make circles and stripes out of either fondant or gum paste and I just wanted to know which is better for that. I'm not making any figurines or anything. Up until now I only heard of using fondant but I have also heard it doesn't harden as well and that gum paste sticks better? I am not using fondant for the cake covering, just butter cream.

For that I strongly recomend fondant, GP dries rock hard and will be super difficult to cut and you don't want to serve it with your delicious cake. Good luck!

is it true that gumpaste is much easier to make flowers with than fondant?

Gumpaste will not taste good, so go with fondant.

Chouxchoux: Gumpaste flowers can have much thinner, more delicate looking petals, but it dries so fast that it can be hard to work with. For me, the best has been a 50/50 mix of gumpaste and fondant.

Workwise it's the same but with GP you can go really thin to make the petals and the flowers look beautiful plus, since it dries faster, you can finish them faster than fondant

thanks guys