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asked April 24th 2014

Buttercream under fondant

Hope you can help.
I have made a few cakes now mainly with buttercream. I am crumb coating then chilling for 15 mins in the fridge then doing a second coat and again chilling for 30 mins so it is completely hard. I bring it out of the fridge and go round it with a hot palette knife to smooth it all over . Then the problem happens when I put the fondant on it always crackes around the top edge. The fondant seems to pull. I’m rolling it out to 4mm. Also I’m putting the sugar paste on almost as soon as I take it out of the fridge should I leave the cake out to get back to room temp or is it ok to put the sugar paste on straight away? Thank you

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Hope you can help.
I have made a few cakes now mainly with buttercream. I am crumb coating then chilling for 15 mins in the fridge then doing a second coat and again chilling for 30 mins so it is completely hard. I bring it out of the fridge and go round it with a hot palette knife to smooth it all over . Then the problem happens when I put the fondant on it always crackes around the top edge. The fondant seems to pull. I’m rolling it out to 4mm. Also I’m putting the sugar paste on almost as soon as I take it out of the fridge should I leave the cake out to get back to room temp or is it ok to put the sugar paste on straight away? Thank you

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Hi t4SSY

I use ganache and let my cakes come to room temperature first if they’ve become very, very cold. When very cold cakes are covered with sugar paste the warmer room temperature can cause the icing to expand and sweat. Air bubbles can also appear as the icing begins to expand. If not popped and smoothed out these can cause cracking as the icing dries out.
If you roll your icing out a lot bigger than the cake there will be a heavy excess. The overhang will pull on the edges as soon as the cake is enrobed causing stretching and cracking. Try not to use too much icing sugar when rolling out as this causes icing to become dry and crack. Rubbing a tiny bit of trex into the paste before rolling out will prevent it from sticking to the worktop, it will also smooth and reduce the cracks. Hope some of this helps. I’m sure other members will be able to give more reasons and solutions to this problem.

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