amateur baker with icing trouble!

[AddictedtoGreys]

can any one tell me why when I cut out shapes from my ready-to-roll icing, they are very shiny and don't go hard or hold their shape like everyone else's seem too?

how do I get them to harden?

thanks!

Wrong icing, ready roll icing is fondant icing, designed to stay pliable. You need to use royal icing for a hard set. You cant buy it pre-done, it mixes from a powder.

www.wilton.com/recipe/Royal-Icing

Fondant will dry out but needs a while - you can speed it up by putting shapes in your oven with just the fan on.
But what you are missing is that usually we would add a pinch of either gum tragacanth or cmc powder. This makes fondant dry harder and faster.

Fondant will eventually dry but it take a while (a good few days). Cake makers tend to add CMC power to it to firm it up and make it dry faster. Or you can buy flower/modelling paste which once rolled out and cut into shape dries quite quickly. Sainsburys sell their own brand modelling paste which you can use alone or you could mix 1/2 and 1/2 with normal roll out fondant to make thing dry faster.

Like others have said, I mix a little tylo powder into my fondant and do figures a week in advance, keep in a cardboard box and they will harden.

Sherbert I'm intrigued though, how do you make figures etc out of royal icing?

Add gum tragacanth to it before modelling. It should set after 24 hours or so.

thanks everyone

so if you were to decorate a cupcake with a flower that you wanted to shape, what would you use for the flower?

Are you going to be putting the flower onto buttercream? If so, you need to make sure it's really really dry before using, as the buttercream can make fondant soften again. I'd make flowers using fondant with a pinch of cmc (also called tylo or tylose) and leave them to dry for a couple of days before using

You best option if yo are going to make a flower is to use flower/modelling paste as it dries much faster than fondant.

this is the Sainsburys version. You can colour it with gel colours.