Painting on fondant

If you have looked at my slideshow, you will notice that some of my cakes have been painted. The Dale Earnhardt car I painted for my friends husband, my picnic table cake, the teddy bears picnic blanket, and my tiger cake all had painted elements on them. This is very easy to do, and it will only take me a second to tell you how to do it.

Regardless of whether you want to paint a small area or the whole cake, you can do this easily by simply mixing some icing colors with either some vodka or clear vanilla extract. The vodka would probably evaporate more quickly, but since I am not a big fan of alcohol, I prefer to use the clear vanilla extract.

To do this you will need the following items:

A good paint brush
clear vanilla extract
icing colors
toothpick or edible food markers
ice cube tray or painters palatte tray with indented cups

You first want to make sure you have a very good brush. You don't want the bristles falling out all over your fondant.

Secondly, you will need a tray to mix your icing colors in. This way you can easily change colors by rinsing your brush with some warm water.

I use Wilton's icing colors, because they are easily accessible to me. You could also use Americolors if you wish. I have even used McCormicks in a pinch.

Clear vanilla extract is not too difficult to find. I buy mine at my local Walmart, or I sometimes buy it at my local party supply store.

You don't have to be an artist to paint on fondant. Using a toothpick or edible food marker, you can easily trace an image onto the cake using a stencil or paper image.

Let's say I want to paint a baseball bat and baseball onto my fondant. If I have a stencil, I would lightly trace around the stencil with a toothpick or marker and paint my image. If I were using a paper image, I would put the image on top of a piece of wax paper and then lay both pieces on top of the cake and trace the image with a toothpick. The reason for the wax paper is to prevent the cake from becoming contaminated. If you are using a picture from, let's say a magazine, there are inks and contaminates on the paper you don't necessaryily want on the cake.

There is another way you can transfer an image to a cake that is slightly more complicated, but you can do more intricate designs. You can take an image on paper or even a photo, and you can tape the image to the bottom of a piece of acrylic, glass, or plexiglass. With the glass side facing you, trace the image with royal icing. Let the image dry thoroughly (at least one day but preferably a week). Once the image is dry, flip it over onto the fondant with the royal icing side down. Lightly press the royal icing image into the fondant. You can now either pipe around the impression or paint it. This is a technique you can use for brush embroidery as well. If you would like to watch a tutorial, check out Elaine MacGregor's "Impressing a pattern onto your cake and brush embroidery" video on this blog.

Painting fondant can be fun, especially if you can air-brush (but I'm afraid I have no expertise in this area, yet). I have seen whole cakes used as a canvas. Have fun with it.