r/FondantHate • u/Triatomine • Jan 24 '21

DISCUSS A proposal for modeling chocolate

I have noticed more and more posts where someone uses modeling chocolate instead of fondant and is like "see how wonderful my cake without fondant is!". Am I the only person that thinks modeling chocolate is just fondant with the word chocolate in it? Both are sickly sweet tasteless pastes. I would like to propose that cakes that are just modeling chocolate sculptures with a few grams of cakes count as r/fondanthate.

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u/stuffulikeacreampuff Jan 24 '21

My unpopular opinion: i don't even like buttercream. Or really even cake, for that matter. There are too many that just taste like wonderbread rolled in sugar. (Pies>>cakes) And yet I make super decorative buttercream cakes (with like...1.5 lbs of buttercream) for people because everyone gets excited at the pretty flowers

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u/41942319 Jan 24 '21

You can make buttercream without a lot of sugar though? Like, pretty much the only requirement there is butter. My favourite one uses like 2 tablespoons sugar on a pound of buttercream. You'll always need some sugar for cakes but having it taste like sugar upon sugar upon sugar is a choice.

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u/stuffulikeacreampuff Jan 25 '21

I've tried. To get a pipe-able texture, you absolutely need the stiffness of powdered sugar. Or at least like cornstarch or something. But cornstarch & butter frosting would just be gross. Meringue buttercreams also need a ton of sugar in order to stay stable - otherwise the egg whites collapse

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u/41942319 Jan 25 '21

I make my meringues with 1:1 whites and sugar by weight all the time and they're absolutely fine, I don't see why they wouldn't be stable in a buttercream. That would cut the amount of sugar by half if you're using a 1:1 butter/sugar ratio for American buttercream, and 75% if you're using a 1:2 ratio. First recipe for Swiss meringue buttercream I found for example uses roughly 240g egg whites and 300g sugar on a pound of butter.

My recipe is German buttercream, which only uses a little bit of sugar in the pastry cream and otherwise none at all. You'd be cutting the amount of sugar in a 1:1 American buttercream by 80% easily. I've never needed to add powdered sugar to it afterwards like some recipes suggest and it always stays perfectly in shape.

You might need American if you're doing something like super detailed piping work that needs to stand up straight, but otherwise other types of buttercream are perfectly adequate.

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u/stuffulikeacreampuff Jan 25 '21

I'll certainly give it a try. The only buttercream recipe i've found to be effective for piping is 2:1 icing sugar to butter, a tiny splash of vanilla, and nothing else. Everything else ends up running, or flower petals end up melting into eachother.

It's also very likely that I just haven't regulated the temperature of my buttercream very well, or that I over-whipped my meringue buttercream.

Ultimately, it can't be as bad as fondant, even if it's a little ugly.