What's the difference between fondant icing and royal icing?!
What's the difference between fondant icing and royal icing?
Answers:
Fondant icing is rolled out and laid onto the cake, while royal icing is spread.
Fondant is a confection used as a filling or coating for cakes, pastries, and candies or sweets. In its simplest form, it is sugar and water cooked to a point, specifically soft-ball stage, cooled slightly, and stirred or beaten until it is an opaque mass of creamy consistency.
Typically, glucose is added to prevent the syrup from graining while cooking. Corn syrup is the most common form of glucose used in North America.
In the rest of the world Glucose sugar is used exclusively.
Fondant is commonly used to decorate wedding cakes. This gives the cakes a smooth look.
Royal icing is a hard white icing, made from softly beaten egg whites, icing sugar (powdered sugar), and sometimes lemon juice. It is used on Christmas cake, wedding cakes, gingerbread houses, etc., either as a smooth covering like marzipan, or in sharp peaks. Glycerine is occasionally added to prevent the icing from setting too hard.
Royal icing is usually considered a decorative icing, as it does not have as pleasant a taste as marzipan or traditional soft icings. It is not recommended for icing cakes, unless cake stands are used. This is because after royal icing dries and hardens, it tends to crack easily. However, due to the smooth and beautiful look it gives to cakes when dry, it is often used for decorative wedding cakes.
Fondant Icing is more like cooking play dough where is can be shaped and rolled out for art projects; royal icing is just spreadable, it s like having a model car versus a real one that you put gasoline in. (smile)
Royal icing is a mixture of egg white and icing sugar -- optional lemon juice and optional blue optical whitener -- while fondant icing has an emulsifier -- usually glucose syrup -- added to these same ingredients, which prevents it from hardening fully, for longer, which gives a 'melting' eating experience. Their methods are otherwise identical. Because of its plasticity, fondant icing can be rolled. Royal icing is applied in coats with a palette knife, building up structural layers, over days, as you go along. The penultimate coat is then sanded down and a much more liquid final coat of royal icing is applied to give the finish
To delay the final setting finish for royal icing, glycerine is added.to retain a fondant-ish eating experience in the early days of presentation. This effect wears off quickly as the royal icing continues to dry.
Hope this helps.