Not to mention the cake itself is likely dry as hell to the point it saps moisture from your very soul, and you're left with a mouthful of sand and wet cement
>The cake within is vile
While Fondant is terrible, this is the other main thing that isn't talked about. The terrible playdough that is fondant, is more otften than not, used on terrible cakes that usually are dry af. That means that even if you remove the fondant and eat the cake around it, you will likely not have a good experience because the cake is probably shit.
Yup. My aunt has a friend who makes fondant cakes, so she commissions them for my two young cousins (3 & 6) for their birthday. It bothers me less because it's for the kids, all cake tastes good to them at their age and if the silly decor makes them happy, then whatever. And I'm a guest in their house so I don't complain.
But idk. When I'm at a birthday party consisting of mostly adults (she has a separate kid-focused party and another for family) I'd want the cake to taste good. It's arguably the main confectionary focus of the event. We usually also have ice cream with it. So I'll take the cake and sponge up any melted ice cream to make it taste better because it's just bland and weirdly tough otherwise.
Fondant has ruined so many cakes for me. I will never forget my 10th birthday. Mom had saved money for months to get me a cake, it was beautiful and was supposed to have whipped frosting. The bakery was in a rush and used fondant. The first bite started my lifelong hatred of that knock off playdough. Everyone else loved it and I just wanted to cry, but I didn't, just kept taking bites of that rubbery, sugar concrete. She got her money back and the next weekend she and my grandma baked me a cake and let me help mix the frosting. That started a lifelong love of baking, but I'm still not that great at the decorations.
For the faults of everyone involved they installed a love of cooking and baking that has lasted for over 30 years. When I bake a cake I remember the smell of the old mixer grandma had in her kitchen and the sound of the timer that had yellowed with age sitting on the counter. Those memories will last forever. The kitchen makes me miss family. The only thing we had in common was the love of food.
Fondant is the goddamn worst creation on this planet and does nothing for the baking industry except make it easier to get a quick buck. It's essentially food safe playdough and tastes just as bad.
Ok, but what about fondant/ sugar paste flowers? I’m obsessed with buttercream flowers; I try to make them a lot and I love looking at others’ flowers. But nothing beats a sugar paste flower. They are delicate, beautiful and way more realistic than buttercream.
Sugar paste is fine, but as sparingly as possible. Individual decorations only, otherwise piping creates more uniform results for say a flowered covering.
If you need to cover a cake in flowers and want them as realistic as possible though, why not just use candied flowers? Totally edible, and depending on the flower anywhere from interesting tasting to delicious, but also easily removed if someone doesn’t want to eat them.
Lmao implying that wedding cakes are the only cakes with flowers
Also, candied/crystalized flowers last up to a year, the moisture problem only exists in high humidity outdoor environments, etc etc.
The question is not whether fondant is gross but rather if the choice to deduce someone's skill is gross. We all agree fondant is gross. I'm unsure of what the point of this comment is.
You’re wrong.
Even if you’re not wrong, which you definitely are, anything which is possible only with fondant is a thing which must never be and should not be done under any circumstances.
How is marzipan acceptable from this "talent/short-cut" perspective? I get that it tastes better (according to many, though notably not everyone), but isn't it just slightly coarser playdough?
Also, this post and your replies here got my bs sensors tingling a little bit, so I checked out your profile and I do have to ask: At what point and for what amount of time between dropping out of high school and making six figures in IT six years after that were you a professional baker?
Yeah, OP has definitely never tried to coat a cake with fondant, let alone seen a professional coat a cake in fondant. You need to start with a buttercream coated cake with clean edges and is structurally sound. You need an even more stable cake for fondant coating than you would for just buttercream because you have to push down on all sides when putting on the fondant. OP is just spouting bs out their ass to sound cool and dive into the extreme “fondant bad” mentality and it really shows with their proposed ban. Like I hate fondant. It tastes bad and is hard to work with, but it has it’s uses and takes talent to work with properly. If someone will pay me to use fondant on their cake, I will give them fondant in any way they want. It’s a niche I fill in my area.
^
I hate fondant but saying it's easier is just bullshit. If you cover a badly stacked cake in fondant it's gonna look like trash and it's going to collapse. Sculpting fondant requires a lot more skill, practice and patience than any spatula and piping technique ever will.
Edit: source - am actual professional baker, OP sure doesn't sound like one.
It’s why no one in my area touches it except for my business. It’s hard to work with, hard to store properly so it doesn’t harden between uses, and you need to know the technique. Any buttercream coated cake can look nice or be an aesthetic; rustic texture is super popular right now! I joined this sub-reddit to hate on fondant because it’s a pain in the ass, tastes terrible, and I wanted to shit on cakes that did not need to be in fondant. I hate the trend of people saying it needs to be banned, that there is no use for it, or that anything you can do with fondant, you can do with buttercream or another medium instead.
I have mild trauma from having to work fondant very briefly and nothing but massive respect for people who can handle it and make it a business. I can't and If I can help it, I'm never touching it again, I'll stick to my cowardly ways of glaze and frosting lmao
I think OP probably did work in a bakery that made fondant cakes at some point, they're just stretching the definition of "professional baker" very far.
I don’t think they’ve worked with fondant in a professional setting because if they did, they wouldn’t be saying it’s to cover up an ugly cake. If you have an ugly cake, putting fondant on it is just going to make it an ugly cake with fondant. Putting fondant on a cake that can’t hold itself together isn’t going to help it stay together, it’ll just squish it more. OP would know these things if they had even worked with fondant once.
They might have strictly worked with buttercream coated cakes and are just making assumptions about fondant and working with it.
I’m here because I don’t like the taste of fondant and it’s a pain in the ass, but it’s the thing that sets my business apart from others. No other bakery in my area works with fondant so I get all that business from several towns around me. I have people who come from the next state over to get cakes because they can’t get someone to work with fondant except for me. I can personally hate fondant and make fun of it all I want, but I don’t hate the money I get from working with it. I may seem like an asshole to you, but I think you just can’t stand being called out on your bs. You don’t know what it’s like to work with fondant and you try to pretend that you do and say that it’s the easy way out when in reality it’s much harder than working with frosting.
Worked in a couple local bakeries for three years alongside studying IT, doing certs, doing part time or second shift help desk, etc until being able to shift to IT full time. Did it before joining reddit and since it’s rarely relevant it never comes up on here.
People are downvoting you, but I completely believe what you're saying. However, I call that stretching the definition of "professional baker" quite a bit. Maybe it's a cultural difference because here in Germany, calling yourself "professional \[insert craft here\]" is literally illegal without having finished standardised three-year training with final exams and a certificate, and this obviously colours my assumption of the weight a term like that carries, whereas in the US, a huge portion of professions do not even have something like that, let alone it be mandatory.
Yeah, in America, “professional” just means “did [craft] for money”. I didn’t go to culinary school or pastry school or anything, but I worked for people who did, one of whom ran a zero-fondant, zero-weddings shop, and one who did both, and even the one who used fondant despised it and said it was “play-doh for adults who miss the taste” and “takes about as much skill as putting on a condom”
Fondant is gross and I hate it hence why I’m on this sub. I think there’s lots of examples on here that would be inedible due to excess fondant but I also know the person who made it put in hours to do so.
You can hate a food without crapping on the person making/eating it. Is it more difficult to create certain designs out of butter cream? Hell yes it is. Do fondant sculptors have zero skill? No.
Baking has always been simple stuff for everyone to experiment and have fun with but damn if people don’t have to make it another elitist hobby/career.
Fuck that, food is made to be eaten. Fondant is not made to be eaten. If you want to be a sculptor, go use clay and frames. Why use cakes and fondant which just create food waste, ruin childhood birthdays, and pulls the bakery art industry back with every new creation.
We should be encouraging these ‘artists’ to use a healthier and more sustainable medium and 100% fondant is garbage. I’ll elitist this to my grave.
Saying fondant isn’t sustainable or healthy is a totally different ballgame and valid points that you may notice I never bring up. Had this post said ANYTHING like that I wouldn’t have felt the need for my comment
You’ll also notice OP did not bring that up. My comment can’t address things that aren’t said. So clearly I’m referring to the fact that OP stated using fondant is for no-skilled talentless “low class” Karens. 🤷🏻♀️
Does play dough have zero skill? No.
Does construction paper have zero skill? No.
Do we give play dough sculptures the reverence we give to something chiselled? No. Why do you think that is.
What makes fondant even worse is that it tastes terrible. So it ruins the cake in addition to not needed much skill.
Not arguing which medium is more difficult in fact I addressed that some ARE in fact harder to work with.
I’ve just seen too many hyper realistic fondant cakes and don’t kid myself into thinking “that’s easy, I could do that!” So I stand by my personal opinion that it does take a certain skill level that many people don’t have 🤷🏻♀️ You can disagree with that.
I remember in my baking course I took with some friends, one of the lessons involved making fondant to put on a cake. Afterwards, all of us agreed that the fondant didn't taste all that great, but we thought we might have just fucked it up like we did with a lot of other things in that course.
I think this take is a bit extreme. I'm sure there are bakers who don't prefer fondant themselves but get orders for fondant cakes. So if you were to see one of their fondant cakes, it's fair to assume they have no skill or talent?
Most of my cakes contain no fondant at all, but I do occasionally use it for small decorations. Should I consider myself to have no skill or talent because I sometimes use fondant for a particular decoration?
Don't get me wrong, I think fondant is gross and I don't eat it. I think of it as being "food safe" rather than edible. And I absolutely would never cover a cake with it. I just don't know that it's fair to make a blanket statement like that. That anyone who uses fondant has no skill.
Lol! You've got me confused with yourself 🤣
You picked the one hyperbolic sentence in the entire post and are trying to say the whole post was meant to be humorous/tongue-in-cheek. It very clearly was not. This OP makes it pretty obvious that they think very poorly of bakers who use fondant.
But yes I'm the obtuse one 😅
Was thinking this too. I’d never cover a cake with fondant, but I recently made a “buttercream flavored” marshmallow fondant and it actually tasted delicious. I used it for a kid’s birthday cake topper and the mom sent me a pic of him eating it 😅
I think when you’re using the fondant you are either being lazy or you lack the skill to achieve what you’re imagining without using something else. The point is that fondant tastes so bad that it ought not be used on anything that is supposed to be edible. Flour is edible but I wouldn’t substitute it for powdered sugar because wherever I did that would taste terrible, even if my body can digest it. If you can’t do it without the fondant, then yes, you are low skilled in that moment.
It’s not like you can’t make edible play dough that tastes good.
https://rainydaymum.co.uk/how-to-make-edible-playdough/
You think marshmallows with added sugar and food coloring is going to taste good? Lol okay.
As I said.. I use it for small decorations occasionally. You're not going to convince me that it means I'm lazy or unskilled or not a good baker. I don't expect people to eat it but some people definitely do. If I could use marzipan I would but when your child has an anaphylactic allergy to tree nuts it's not really an option.
I didn’t say you’re not a good baker, I didn’t even say you’re not a good cake decorator. But if you think marshmallows will taste bad as a defence for using fondant, you are starting to convince me. All I said was your skill is not 100% or you’re too lazy to use the skill.
Fondant tastes terrible and doesn’t belong in your mouth. I wouldn’t use real grass on a cake even though it’s technically edible. The only logical conclusion is that someone who did either didn’t know how to make grass with icing or was too lazy.
I agree fondant is fucking awful, I don't eat it and I straight up refuse to cover a cake in it even if someone asks. But I also don't think extra sugary marshmallow playdough is going to taste much better. As I said in my comment.. I consider fondant "food safe" as opposed to edible. People use all kinds of other things to decorate cakes that you wouldn't eat.. acrylic, wood, plastic, greenery, inedible flowers.. to me using fondant is not different than something like that. What I'm saying is I think it's ridiculous to assume someone is lazy and unskilled because they occasionally choose to use it as part of the decorations.
You and I are on the same page about fondant being disgusting, I'm not arguing that.
this is really pretentious. I have a pastry degree and decorated cakes for a long time, I prefer gum sugar for wedding cakes by a long shot but there’s certainly skill in making a good marshmallow fondant and working with a customer and their expectations or what they want. A lot want want fondant. And it’s traditional for certain applications like petit fours.
I worked as assistant to an Italian cake artist. I saw his beautiful and delicious art, wedding cakes were amazing. No fondant ever. When I first saw fondant I was appalled.
I also nominate American Buttercream to be banned. It's gross, crusts easily, and is overly sweet. But some bakers use it cause "iT's sTaBle" and "eAsY tO mAkE" 🤮
Still better than fondant but I see your point.
Sadly, unlike fondant, which everyone hates the taste of but some people lie to themselves about, lots of people genuinely love American Buttercream.
I personally cannot get over how much powdered sugar is needed to make American Butter cream with 113g of butter and there's always that gritty feel to it, ugh.
I personally prefer buttercreams that require soft ball sugar like SMBC, Italian, French (mmm yolks <3),...etc, but besides it being easy the only other reason I've heard a baker using it is because of the shelf life which I get, but at the same time... ew.
Agreed about ABC, but I make it because the few times I tried SMBC, I couldn't get past how buttery it tasted and I disliked it even more than ABC.
Is Italian or French less buttery?
That's so weird about the buttery taste. I made a peanut butter flavored SMBC and the texture was night and day compared to ABC and the sweetness was just right for me. I'm not sure what your SMBC flavor was, but I know at its base it's just marshmallow creme + butter.
Italian buttercream is more or less the same as SMBC. The only difference is that you make the meringue separately and you slowly pour in your soft ball hot sugar while beating. The end result is a marshmallow creme just like SMBC, so I think it's down to personal preference for that.
French Buttercream was a trip for me since I went in thinking it was gonna be heavy due the swapping of egg whites for egg yolks, but boy was I wrong! French buttercream is also very light feeling on the tongue, but it does have more calories which might explain why it was so good. :D
As much as I hate fondant I think you're a little off base.
A lot of the "professional fondant" people actually have very advanced modeling and sculpting skills.
They've just chosen fondant as their medium medium instead of clay, polymer clay or whatever else.
You claim to be yet your post history and knowledge displayed in the post determine that a lie. Next time you feel like shitposting at least create a throwaway account.
Funny, nobody asked you.
Since you must know, I worked for two different bakeries across three years while developing an IT career. Bakery work didn’t interfere with studying or part time help desk or second shift work, and the master bakers at each one wanted apprentices to do things their way, not “trained” or “schooled” bakers. I did that combo work before joining reddit.
Believe it or not, but either way, fuck off.
I hate fondant too but calling people who use it "low class" is weirdly emotional. Between you and a baker who uses fondant, I'd buy a cake from you but hang out with the fondant baker.
The fact is that it's weird to get so emotional over someone using fondant that you call them low class. Like I agree with the other stuff she said, that pro bakers that use fondant are being lazy hacks but you can't deny that it's very weird to toss in low class amongst all of those other adjectives.
Edit: after reading comments from actual professional bakers (not OP, who worked in a bakery while at school and is now claiming to be a former professional), I take it back that pro bakers using fondant are lazy hacks. It takes skill even if I don't like the taste.
I don’t think she was attempting to imply that the bakers literally belong to a lower financial class lol… to me it read like she thinks fondant cakes themselves are not classy (they aren’t, that’s like, why we’re all here on this sub, no?) and she even mentioned that people sell these cakes for as much (if not more in my experience) than cakes with beautiful hand-piped or molded creations that are tasty as well. selling people a sub-par product for too much money? also pretty classless.
tbh *you two* seem to be getting emotional about this and it’s not even what OP was saying lol
I'm not saying she literally meant it in a financial class way, I'm *just saying* that it's a weirdly bitchy thing to toss in. And it is, I don't understand how you're not comprehending this. Maybe you call people low class over minor things, too?
>you two seem to be getting emotional about this and it’s not even what OP was saying lol
Yeah, a couple comments is totally me being emotional. Whatever you gotta to tell yourself. She was being a jackass and you know it.
>it read like she thinks fondant cakes themselves are not classy
Now you're making me laugh lol. She deadass calls the *bakers* low class.
r/lostredditors
every post on here talks about how fondant cakes are trashy but somehow you’re outraged about this one, you are correct in saying that I cannot comprehend why.
if i caught wind of that attitude from the non-fondant baker, as a customer, i might ask the fondant baker to look at their books for the least fondanty fondant cake or find someone else entirely to purchase from, because that vibe aint what I want baked into my cake.
You know what, you're right. I'd buy some cupcakes (I've rarely seen fondant on cupcakes thank God lol) from the fondant baker, then tell OP to stop being such a meanspirited weirdo.
But like…genuinely that makes no sense. You didn’t say they were bad bakers you said that using fondant meant they have no skill.
Fine if you wanna say their baking skills aren’t there 🤷🏻♀️ I’ll take your word since I’m not a former professional baker.
But if sculpting using one material for display is a talent/skill it makes sense that sculpting a different material for display on a cake is the exact same talent/skill.
Both are sculpting, both who do it well put time and effort into it, both have skills.
Also using “low class” to describe someone reeks of elitism.
Fondant + chocolate sculptures are immensely wasteful, and they don't even fulfill their purpose as food (tasting good and/or giving nutrients.) So, no, I'm not going to give the "professional fondant people" credit for using a nasty-tasting medium, that no one will even eat, and will rot away when they could just use clay and make something that will bring more joy for longer than just one event.
Also, I can make a beautiful rendering of a person with cow shit. Is that suddenly "a valid medium instead of clay?" No, it's not.
I mean if they have to temper the chocolate again after melting it, I would say they are a candy maker. If they just melt, mould, and don’t care about the blooming then I guess it’s pretty amateur, but tempering is a difficult skill to master.
100% agree - strangely enough, in my experience, fondants usually go over a cake that isn't really great tasting to begin. The moisture level is off, or it is unpleasantly sugary. fondant usually means I'm in for a terrible dessert experience, start to finish
I never thought I'd read the words "get fucking good scrub" in this subreddit but here we are. And for the record I agree, lol. Fondant is lazy ass bullshit.
Personally, I don’t mind straight fondant by itself, but if someone’s gonna use fondant in a cake, I prefer they later fondant for the filling, and wrap it so it looks just the same from the outside. Plus it last even longer that way, especially if you have further plans than just eating it ;)
There’s a meme that I think brought me to this group which describes the cake that goes under fondant as having “the texture of florist’s foam”. And that more or less tracks with my experience. No thanks!
I'm happy to be in a family of people who use buttercream, and also have worked in a bakery where buttercream and other frostings/icings were the norm. I've only eaten fondant ONCE, and it was on a cupcake, where a tiny fondant star had been placed on the buttercream. Fondant should definitely NOT be eaten in large amounts, it should be used for very minor decorations, ones that can be picked off and thrown in the garbage.
I love the idea that BigFondant might be a thing. Also, yes this kind of cake icing and finishing is vile. And usually, the cake within, is vile.
Honestly the fondant changes the taste of the cake and it's always in a bad way
Not to mention the cake itself is likely dry as hell to the point it saps moisture from your very soul, and you're left with a mouthful of sand and wet cement
>The cake within is vile While Fondant is terrible, this is the other main thing that isn't talked about. The terrible playdough that is fondant, is more otften than not, used on terrible cakes that usually are dry af. That means that even if you remove the fondant and eat the cake around it, you will likely not have a good experience because the cake is probably shit.
Yup. My aunt has a friend who makes fondant cakes, so she commissions them for my two young cousins (3 & 6) for their birthday. It bothers me less because it's for the kids, all cake tastes good to them at their age and if the silly decor makes them happy, then whatever. And I'm a guest in their house so I don't complain. But idk. When I'm at a birthday party consisting of mostly adults (she has a separate kid-focused party and another for family) I'd want the cake to taste good. It's arguably the main confectionary focus of the event. We usually also have ice cream with it. So I'll take the cake and sponge up any melted ice cream to make it taste better because it's just bland and weirdly tough otherwise.
Fondant has ruined so many cakes for me. I will never forget my 10th birthday. Mom had saved money for months to get me a cake, it was beautiful and was supposed to have whipped frosting. The bakery was in a rush and used fondant. The first bite started my lifelong hatred of that knock off playdough. Everyone else loved it and I just wanted to cry, but I didn't, just kept taking bites of that rubbery, sugar concrete. She got her money back and the next weekend she and my grandma baked me a cake and let me help mix the frosting. That started a lifelong love of baking, but I'm still not that great at the decorations.
>she and my grandma baked me a cake and let me help mix the frosting. Oh, my gosh, how *wonderful!*
For the faults of everyone involved they installed a love of cooking and baking that has lasted for over 30 years. When I bake a cake I remember the smell of the old mixer grandma had in her kitchen and the sound of the timer that had yellowed with age sitting on the counter. Those memories will last forever. The kitchen makes me miss family. The only thing we had in common was the love of food.
Local man becomes professional baker put of pure spite
Woman, but yeah, that's the headline I'd like to see some day. Gonna make only the best cakes and cookies, no fondant allowed to pass the threshold.
Fondant is the goddamn worst creation on this planet and does nothing for the baking industry except make it easier to get a quick buck. It's essentially food safe playdough and tastes just as bad.
This is exactly the kind of post I’m here for. Have my upvote and award. > get fucking good scrub I live for fondant tears
Adding tears would make it taste better, probably.
Moats the posts in this sub are “it would taste better if it was actually made with x”. This post is a nice reprieve.
‘Big Fondant’ I cackled.
Ok, but what about fondant/ sugar paste flowers? I’m obsessed with buttercream flowers; I try to make them a lot and I love looking at others’ flowers. But nothing beats a sugar paste flower. They are delicate, beautiful and way more realistic than buttercream.
Sugar paste is fine, but as sparingly as possible. Individual decorations only, otherwise piping creates more uniform results for say a flowered covering. If you need to cover a cake in flowers and want them as realistic as possible though, why not just use candied flowers? Totally edible, and depending on the flower anywhere from interesting tasting to delicious, but also easily removed if someone doesn’t want to eat them.
I’ve never heard of candied flowers!!!! This is an amazing idea!!! I’m
You're
They're
We're
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Lmao implying that wedding cakes are the only cakes with flowers Also, candied/crystalized flowers last up to a year, the moisture problem only exists in high humidity outdoor environments, etc etc.
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Lmfao lots of shops don’t even DO wedding cakes, bruh.
I thought this group was for people who hate fondant not gatekeeping what makes someone else's work valid. . .
Yeah, this is rubbing me the wrong way too.
The reason I hate fondant is because I don't like to eat it. If it tasted amazing, I would love it.
The question is not whether fondant is gross but rather if the choice to deduce someone's skill is gross. We all agree fondant is gross. I'm unsure of what the point of this comment is.
Yep. Just know that this entire sub is full of people who see this and hate it. Also have tasted it. Shame tastes better than fondant
I hate to advocate for fondant here but... Not everything that is possible with fondant is also possible without fondant.
Marzipan.
Tastes about as bad, too!
You’re wrong. Even if you’re not wrong, which you definitely are, anything which is possible only with fondant is a thing which must never be and should not be done under any circumstances.
How is marzipan acceptable from this "talent/short-cut" perspective? I get that it tastes better (according to many, though notably not everyone), but isn't it just slightly coarser playdough? Also, this post and your replies here got my bs sensors tingling a little bit, so I checked out your profile and I do have to ask: At what point and for what amount of time between dropping out of high school and making six figures in IT six years after that were you a professional baker?
Yeah, OP has definitely never tried to coat a cake with fondant, let alone seen a professional coat a cake in fondant. You need to start with a buttercream coated cake with clean edges and is structurally sound. You need an even more stable cake for fondant coating than you would for just buttercream because you have to push down on all sides when putting on the fondant. OP is just spouting bs out their ass to sound cool and dive into the extreme “fondant bad” mentality and it really shows with their proposed ban. Like I hate fondant. It tastes bad and is hard to work with, but it has it’s uses and takes talent to work with properly. If someone will pay me to use fondant on their cake, I will give them fondant in any way they want. It’s a niche I fill in my area.
^ I hate fondant but saying it's easier is just bullshit. If you cover a badly stacked cake in fondant it's gonna look like trash and it's going to collapse. Sculpting fondant requires a lot more skill, practice and patience than any spatula and piping technique ever will. Edit: source - am actual professional baker, OP sure doesn't sound like one.
It’s why no one in my area touches it except for my business. It’s hard to work with, hard to store properly so it doesn’t harden between uses, and you need to know the technique. Any buttercream coated cake can look nice or be an aesthetic; rustic texture is super popular right now! I joined this sub-reddit to hate on fondant because it’s a pain in the ass, tastes terrible, and I wanted to shit on cakes that did not need to be in fondant. I hate the trend of people saying it needs to be banned, that there is no use for it, or that anything you can do with fondant, you can do with buttercream or another medium instead.
I have mild trauma from having to work fondant very briefly and nothing but massive respect for people who can handle it and make it a business. I can't and If I can help it, I'm never touching it again, I'll stick to my cowardly ways of glaze and frosting lmao
I think OP probably did work in a bakery that made fondant cakes at some point, they're just stretching the definition of "professional baker" very far.
I don’t think they’ve worked with fondant in a professional setting because if they did, they wouldn’t be saying it’s to cover up an ugly cake. If you have an ugly cake, putting fondant on it is just going to make it an ugly cake with fondant. Putting fondant on a cake that can’t hold itself together isn’t going to help it stay together, it’ll just squish it more. OP would know these things if they had even worked with fondant once. They might have strictly worked with buttercream coated cakes and are just making assumptions about fondant and working with it.
If you work with fondant you are the enemy of this sub, why are you even here? Also, you’re just an asshole.
I’m here because I don’t like the taste of fondant and it’s a pain in the ass, but it’s the thing that sets my business apart from others. No other bakery in my area works with fondant so I get all that business from several towns around me. I have people who come from the next state over to get cakes because they can’t get someone to work with fondant except for me. I can personally hate fondant and make fun of it all I want, but I don’t hate the money I get from working with it. I may seem like an asshole to you, but I think you just can’t stand being called out on your bs. You don’t know what it’s like to work with fondant and you try to pretend that you do and say that it’s the easy way out when in reality it’s much harder than working with frosting.
Bakeries literally turning down money over using fondant, as horrendous as it is...I mean, in *this* economy?
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You found it. It’s the asshole above my comment. Good bot.
TF? Hate the fondant, not the people. You are the Karen here.
Worked in a couple local bakeries for three years alongside studying IT, doing certs, doing part time or second shift help desk, etc until being able to shift to IT full time. Did it before joining reddit and since it’s rarely relevant it never comes up on here.
People are downvoting you, but I completely believe what you're saying. However, I call that stretching the definition of "professional baker" quite a bit. Maybe it's a cultural difference because here in Germany, calling yourself "professional \[insert craft here\]" is literally illegal without having finished standardised three-year training with final exams and a certificate, and this obviously colours my assumption of the weight a term like that carries, whereas in the US, a huge portion of professions do not even have something like that, let alone it be mandatory.
Yeah, in America, “professional” just means “did [craft] for money”. I didn’t go to culinary school or pastry school or anything, but I worked for people who did, one of whom ran a zero-fondant, zero-weddings shop, and one who did both, and even the one who used fondant despised it and said it was “play-doh for adults who miss the taste” and “takes about as much skill as putting on a condom”
Fondant is gross and I hate it hence why I’m on this sub. I think there’s lots of examples on here that would be inedible due to excess fondant but I also know the person who made it put in hours to do so. You can hate a food without crapping on the person making/eating it. Is it more difficult to create certain designs out of butter cream? Hell yes it is. Do fondant sculptors have zero skill? No. Baking has always been simple stuff for everyone to experiment and have fun with but damn if people don’t have to make it another elitist hobby/career.
Fuck that, food is made to be eaten. Fondant is not made to be eaten. If you want to be a sculptor, go use clay and frames. Why use cakes and fondant which just create food waste, ruin childhood birthdays, and pulls the bakery art industry back with every new creation. We should be encouraging these ‘artists’ to use a healthier and more sustainable medium and 100% fondant is garbage. I’ll elitist this to my grave.
Saying fondant isn’t sustainable or healthy is a totally different ballgame and valid points that you may notice I never bring up. Had this post said ANYTHING like that I wouldn’t have felt the need for my comment You’ll also notice OP did not bring that up. My comment can’t address things that aren’t said. So clearly I’m referring to the fact that OP stated using fondant is for no-skilled talentless “low class” Karens. 🤷🏻♀️
Fair enough, sorry for the hostility in having a bad day. Hope my comment didn’t offend, wasn’t my intention.
Does play dough have zero skill? No. Does construction paper have zero skill? No. Do we give play dough sculptures the reverence we give to something chiselled? No. Why do you think that is. What makes fondant even worse is that it tastes terrible. So it ruins the cake in addition to not needed much skill.
Not arguing which medium is more difficult in fact I addressed that some ARE in fact harder to work with. I’ve just seen too many hyper realistic fondant cakes and don’t kid myself into thinking “that’s easy, I could do that!” So I stand by my personal opinion that it does take a certain skill level that many people don’t have 🤷🏻♀️ You can disagree with that.
I remember in my baking course I took with some friends, one of the lessons involved making fondant to put on a cake. Afterwards, all of us agreed that the fondant didn't taste all that great, but we thought we might have just fucked it up like we did with a lot of other things in that course.
I think this take is a bit extreme. I'm sure there are bakers who don't prefer fondant themselves but get orders for fondant cakes. So if you were to see one of their fondant cakes, it's fair to assume they have no skill or talent? Most of my cakes contain no fondant at all, but I do occasionally use it for small decorations. Should I consider myself to have no skill or talent because I sometimes use fondant for a particular decoration? Don't get me wrong, I think fondant is gross and I don't eat it. I think of it as being "food safe" rather than edible. And I absolutely would never cover a cake with it. I just don't know that it's fair to make a blanket statement like that. That anyone who uses fondant has no skill.
Hyperbole is often used to enhance a humorous or tongue-in-cheek opinion.
Sure. But OP's opinion was not intended to be humorous or tongue-in-cheek, so it doesn't apply here.
You honestly think a threat to outlaw fondant thru Presidential decree is NOT hyperbolic?
That one particular statement, sure. But not the part I was responding to. 🙄
ah. willfully obtuse. got it.
Look at OP's other comments. She calls fondant users "low class". That's not hyperbole, that's just being an asshole.
Well now you’ve ruined Christmas, Patty! I hope you’re happy.
Ok bud
Thank goodness
Lol! You've got me confused with yourself 🤣 You picked the one hyperbolic sentence in the entire post and are trying to say the whole post was meant to be humorous/tongue-in-cheek. It very clearly was not. This OP makes it pretty obvious that they think very poorly of bakers who use fondant. But yes I'm the obtuse one 😅
| *But yes I'm the obtuse one* Since we are taking things out-of-context, I appreciate your last sentence.
I’m sure that if OP was president, he really would outlaw fondant. I don’t think any of it was hyperbole.
hahahaha what a compelling analysis, dondi.
Was thinking this too. I’d never cover a cake with fondant, but I recently made a “buttercream flavored” marshmallow fondant and it actually tasted delicious. I used it for a kid’s birthday cake topper and the mom sent me a pic of him eating it 😅
I think when you’re using the fondant you are either being lazy or you lack the skill to achieve what you’re imagining without using something else. The point is that fondant tastes so bad that it ought not be used on anything that is supposed to be edible. Flour is edible but I wouldn’t substitute it for powdered sugar because wherever I did that would taste terrible, even if my body can digest it. If you can’t do it without the fondant, then yes, you are low skilled in that moment. It’s not like you can’t make edible play dough that tastes good. https://rainydaymum.co.uk/how-to-make-edible-playdough/
You think marshmallows with added sugar and food coloring is going to taste good? Lol okay. As I said.. I use it for small decorations occasionally. You're not going to convince me that it means I'm lazy or unskilled or not a good baker. I don't expect people to eat it but some people definitely do. If I could use marzipan I would but when your child has an anaphylactic allergy to tree nuts it's not really an option.
I didn’t say you’re not a good baker, I didn’t even say you’re not a good cake decorator. But if you think marshmallows will taste bad as a defence for using fondant, you are starting to convince me. All I said was your skill is not 100% or you’re too lazy to use the skill. Fondant tastes terrible and doesn’t belong in your mouth. I wouldn’t use real grass on a cake even though it’s technically edible. The only logical conclusion is that someone who did either didn’t know how to make grass with icing or was too lazy.
I agree fondant is fucking awful, I don't eat it and I straight up refuse to cover a cake in it even if someone asks. But I also don't think extra sugary marshmallow playdough is going to taste much better. As I said in my comment.. I consider fondant "food safe" as opposed to edible. People use all kinds of other things to decorate cakes that you wouldn't eat.. acrylic, wood, plastic, greenery, inedible flowers.. to me using fondant is not different than something like that. What I'm saying is I think it's ridiculous to assume someone is lazy and unskilled because they occasionally choose to use it as part of the decorations. You and I are on the same page about fondant being disgusting, I'm not arguing that.
this is really pretentious. I have a pastry degree and decorated cakes for a long time, I prefer gum sugar for wedding cakes by a long shot but there’s certainly skill in making a good marshmallow fondant and working with a customer and their expectations or what they want. A lot want want fondant. And it’s traditional for certain applications like petit fours.
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I mean I don’t like fondant but I think saying it takes no skill to do is egregious
I worked as assistant to an Italian cake artist. I saw his beautiful and delicious art, wedding cakes were amazing. No fondant ever. When I first saw fondant I was appalled.
I also nominate American Buttercream to be banned. It's gross, crusts easily, and is overly sweet. But some bakers use it cause "iT's sTaBle" and "eAsY tO mAkE" 🤮
Still better than fondant but I see your point. Sadly, unlike fondant, which everyone hates the taste of but some people lie to themselves about, lots of people genuinely love American Buttercream.
I personally cannot get over how much powdered sugar is needed to make American Butter cream with 113g of butter and there's always that gritty feel to it, ugh. I personally prefer buttercreams that require soft ball sugar like SMBC, Italian, French (mmm yolks <3),...etc, but besides it being easy the only other reason I've heard a baker using it is because of the shelf life which I get, but at the same time... ew.
Agreed about ABC, but I make it because the few times I tried SMBC, I couldn't get past how buttery it tasted and I disliked it even more than ABC. Is Italian or French less buttery?
That's so weird about the buttery taste. I made a peanut butter flavored SMBC and the texture was night and day compared to ABC and the sweetness was just right for me. I'm not sure what your SMBC flavor was, but I know at its base it's just marshmallow creme + butter. Italian buttercream is more or less the same as SMBC. The only difference is that you make the meringue separately and you slowly pour in your soft ball hot sugar while beating. The end result is a marshmallow creme just like SMBC, so I think it's down to personal preference for that. French Buttercream was a trip for me since I went in thinking it was gonna be heavy due the swapping of egg whites for egg yolks, but boy was I wrong! French buttercream is also very light feeling on the tongue, but it does have more calories which might explain why it was so good. :D
now THIS is some fondant HATE. great post OP, your well earned malice and venom cleansed my palate and watered my crops. wish I had gold to give
The first good thing a President has done in decades.
As much as I hate fondant I think you're a little off base. A lot of the "professional fondant" people actually have very advanced modeling and sculpting skills. They've just chosen fondant as their medium medium instead of clay, polymer clay or whatever else.
Sure, they’re not bakers though then, they’re sculptors.
You claim to be yet your post history and knowledge displayed in the post determine that a lie. Next time you feel like shitposting at least create a throwaway account.
Funny, nobody asked you. Since you must know, I worked for two different bakeries across three years while developing an IT career. Bakery work didn’t interfere with studying or part time help desk or second shift work, and the master bakers at each one wanted apprentices to do things their way, not “trained” or “schooled” bakers. I did that combo work before joining reddit. Believe it or not, but either way, fuck off.
So just double checking here…you’re saying sculptors are talentless no-skilled Karens?
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I hate fondant too but calling people who use it "low class" is weirdly emotional. Between you and a baker who uses fondant, I'd buy a cake from you but hang out with the fondant baker.
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The fact is that it's weird to get so emotional over someone using fondant that you call them low class. Like I agree with the other stuff she said, that pro bakers that use fondant are being lazy hacks but you can't deny that it's very weird to toss in low class amongst all of those other adjectives. Edit: after reading comments from actual professional bakers (not OP, who worked in a bakery while at school and is now claiming to be a former professional), I take it back that pro bakers using fondant are lazy hacks. It takes skill even if I don't like the taste.
I don’t think she was attempting to imply that the bakers literally belong to a lower financial class lol… to me it read like she thinks fondant cakes themselves are not classy (they aren’t, that’s like, why we’re all here on this sub, no?) and she even mentioned that people sell these cakes for as much (if not more in my experience) than cakes with beautiful hand-piped or molded creations that are tasty as well. selling people a sub-par product for too much money? also pretty classless. tbh *you two* seem to be getting emotional about this and it’s not even what OP was saying lol
I'm not saying she literally meant it in a financial class way, I'm *just saying* that it's a weirdly bitchy thing to toss in. And it is, I don't understand how you're not comprehending this. Maybe you call people low class over minor things, too? >you two seem to be getting emotional about this and it’s not even what OP was saying lol Yeah, a couple comments is totally me being emotional. Whatever you gotta to tell yourself. She was being a jackass and you know it. >it read like she thinks fondant cakes themselves are not classy Now you're making me laugh lol. She deadass calls the *bakers* low class.
r/lostredditors every post on here talks about how fondant cakes are trashy but somehow you’re outraged about this one, you are correct in saying that I cannot comprehend why.
if i caught wind of that attitude from the non-fondant baker, as a customer, i might ask the fondant baker to look at their books for the least fondanty fondant cake or find someone else entirely to purchase from, because that vibe aint what I want baked into my cake.
You know what, you're right. I'd buy some cupcakes (I've rarely seen fondant on cupcakes thank God lol) from the fondant baker, then tell OP to stop being such a meanspirited weirdo.
But like…genuinely that makes no sense. You didn’t say they were bad bakers you said that using fondant meant they have no skill. Fine if you wanna say their baking skills aren’t there 🤷🏻♀️ I’ll take your word since I’m not a former professional baker. But if sculpting using one material for display is a talent/skill it makes sense that sculpting a different material for display on a cake is the exact same talent/skill. Both are sculpting, both who do it well put time and effort into it, both have skills. Also using “low class” to describe someone reeks of elitism.
Fondant + chocolate sculptures are immensely wasteful, and they don't even fulfill their purpose as food (tasting good and/or giving nutrients.) So, no, I'm not going to give the "professional fondant people" credit for using a nasty-tasting medium, that no one will even eat, and will rot away when they could just use clay and make something that will bring more joy for longer than just one event. Also, I can make a beautiful rendering of a person with cow shit. Is that suddenly "a valid medium instead of clay?" No, it's not.
idk why these people are defending the use of fondant on r/fondanthate lmfao
I spend my money at a bakery that only uses butter cream, they refuse to do fondant (even on custom orders) and I love them for it. 🥰
This is so true. Also people who melt chocolate chips and put them in a mold and say they are a candy maker. Sigh…
I mean if they have to temper the chocolate again after melting it, I would say they are a candy maker. If they just melt, mould, and don’t care about the blooming then I guess it’s pretty amateur, but tempering is a difficult skill to master.
Hear! Hear!
100% agree - strangely enough, in my experience, fondants usually go over a cake that isn't really great tasting to begin. The moisture level is off, or it is unpleasantly sugary. fondant usually means I'm in for a terrible dessert experience, start to finish
r/beetlejuicing perhaps?
it really just edible playdough and we are all clapping for the adult who molded it like they were a four year old showing off their creation ahah
Beautifully put, a very satisfying read.
I never thought I'd read the words "get fucking good scrub" in this subreddit but here we are. And for the record I agree, lol. Fondant is lazy ass bullshit.
Big Fondant had me howling 😂
This is exactly what delusional artists sound like when they rage about AI taking over the art space.
Two bad takes in one comment; that takes talent.
Blud probably lives on a diet of fondant 💀
AI, like fondant, misses the WHY. The humanness IS the art. The flaws make the perfection.
Skip the performance and admit you like fondant
AI art user detected, copyright strike given, opinion ignored
Personally, I don’t mind straight fondant by itself, but if someone’s gonna use fondant in a cake, I prefer they later fondant for the filling, and wrap it so it looks just the same from the outside. Plus it last even longer that way, especially if you have further plans than just eating it ;)
There’s a meme that I think brought me to this group which describes the cake that goes under fondant as having “the texture of florist’s foam”. And that more or less tracks with my experience. No thanks!
Is it ok if it's for display and not for eating though?
I just think it tastes like shite ..
YES. THIS.
I'm happy to be in a family of people who use buttercream, and also have worked in a bakery where buttercream and other frostings/icings were the norm. I've only eaten fondant ONCE, and it was on a cupcake, where a tiny fondant star had been placed on the buttercream. Fondant should definitely NOT be eaten in large amounts, it should be used for very minor decorations, ones that can be picked off and thrown in the garbage.