Last weekend my sister and I made a New Orleans Saints themed cake and we had a lot of trouble with the fondant. We colored Wilton's pre-made fondant a gold color and it took quite a bit of gel coloring to get it the color we needed it. Once the coloring process was done it was dry and cracked when we were trying to get it on the cake. We tried adding a little water and that didn't help. So we started over with new fondant, colored, and it was still too dry. We tried adding some shortening and it was still starting to crack around the top of the cake, and break at the bottom.

We wound up putting two layers of fondant on the cake and then brushed it with gold pearl dust and it came out okay, but what I was wondering was how do you color fondant and have that NOT happen? I know there are pre-colored fondants and we will most likely be using those as much as possible if we have to cover a cake in a colored fondant, but I thought I would ask you all if you have any suggestions? Has this happened to anyone else? I'm not sure what we did wrong and how we could fix it.

Thanks!
Joanna

I have never heard of coloring the fondant causing the cracking - if anything you would think it would make it too runny and cause tearing. How old was the fondant? If it was past the pull date that could cause the cracking. It is also possible that it dried out while you were kneading the color into it, but in that case adding the shortening should have helped with the consistancy. I would caution against adding water in future as it would weaken the fondant without adding any resiliancy properties in exchange.
I think that if you had the opportunity it would be interesting to use the same color again on a small portion of newly purchased fondant to see if the same thing happens. If it does then you know for sure that it was the coloring rather than a defect in the fondant.

Thank you for the suggestion. I'm not sure what happened but now I am paranoid about covering a cake with colored fondant. We are making a birthday cake this weekend and will need pink to cover one layer and purple to cover the other. I hope it turns out okay.

Joanna

were you using powder sugar to roll it out on? it sounds from your description that it had too much powder sugar. try rolling using crisco in stead pwd sug if that is what you used.

Yes, we were using powdered sugar. We will try crisco this time. Thank you.

Joanna

wilton fondant is not good. have you tried to make your own?! I recently discovered Rolled Butter cream Fondant, taste just like buttercream but is fondant consistency... maybe try MMF.. i've used that before too.. also when my Wilton fondant starts to get dry, i add Crisco in it and pop it in the microwave for about 5-10 seconds at a time until its pliable again.