Gum Paste vs Fondant

There are many safe to eat clay techniques that are being used today. Aside from pastillage and marzipan, two additional clay methods are popular among baker and cake designers alike. These are the gum paste and fondant clay methods. Although, they are more or less the same and related to one another, each has key differences of its own.

Gum paste is simply adding or combining pastillage and tragacanth. Many actually claim that it’s easy to make gum paste but hard to secure the tragacanth ingredient. It helps in making the paste more malleable during its early stages. This will also give you greater time to manipulate your design before it actually starts to solidify. However, this material firmly dries out more than how a fondant dries. Because of this, gum paste is often used in making very intricate cake accessories for stylish cake designs. Making cake flowers, leaves and other decors is easy using gum paste because it holds the form very well. Moreover, the gum paste dough is stretchable and squashy. Because of this characteristic, it can be rolled into thin sheets or designs for varied visual presentations.

In terms of tastiness and softness, no other edible clay technique comes close to the fondant. This edible clay will enable the design to maintain its form securely but not to the point of making it overly hard. There’s no mistaking it, the fondant also hardens like the gum paste but only to the extent of a clay-like consistency. Overall, fondants stay malleable or bendy far longer than the gum paste.

Due to its smoothness and attractive consistency, fondants are also used as covering to specially designed cakes in almost every situation. It also takes in colors perfectly because of its brilliant white look.

Like the gum paste, fondants can also be utilized in making cake flowers and other accessories. But they are more fragile, less sturdy and even short of flair than gum pastes. To achieve the feat of the gum paste, fondants can be mixed with a little gum paste by kneading the mixture carefully. This will obviously improve the hardness of the material and make it more suitable for cake accessories.

In terms of use, it has been discovered that more cake designers use gum paste in making smaller cake decors and accessories and they use fondant for larger decors that will mostly be eaten. It is also a good thing to note that fondant is what you usually find in the middle of many pastries, specifically candy products.

Summary:
1.Gum paste firmly dries out whereas the fondant dries out less rigidly (less hard).
2.Fondant is more tasty and soft compared to the gum paste.
3.Fondant is commonly used to cover cakes while gum paste is often utilized in making cake decorations.
4.Gum paste is used in making smaller and more intricate decors whereas fondant is used in making larger or bigger cake accessories.

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