Fondant is a baker’s best friend, as it’s an excellent ingredient to use when making realistic figures or other eye-catching decorations for a cake or dessert. If you have fondant decorations you want to store for a while, this guide is for you.
How to store fondant decorations? When storing fondant decorations, wrap the decorations in plastic wrap with some shortening and then store them in an airtight container. Keep them in a cool or room temperature environment. Avoid the fridge and freezer, as the moisture and cold temps can ruin the fondant!
This article will be your guide to storing fondant, whether you want to keep fondant decorations only overnight or for upwards of a week or longer. I’ll explain the steps above for storing fondant in more detail and discuss how early you can make fondant decorations, so keep reading!
Storing Fondant Decorations – Where They Go and How It’s Done
Prepping Fondant Decorations for Storage
At the end of the day, fondant is only glycerol, shortening or vegetable fat, gelatin, water, and sugar. However, it’s much stiffer and clay-like than buttercream. It’s also far more finicky.
Here’s how to set up your fondant decorations for storage.
Step 1: Grab more shortening and gently brush the fondant decorations with the stuff using a pastry brush or a similar kitchen tool.
Why the shortening, you ask? Shortening is fat-based, and at room temperature, it remains solid. It can induce some moisture into your fondant decorations so they don’t dry out prematurely.
When fondant gets too dry, its brittle state makes it more likely to crack. You can’t really use it at that point.
You don’t need a lot of shortening here, only about a pea-sized amount. Remember, fondant already contains shortening, so too much can be overkill.
Using clean fingers, work the shortening into the fondant. You don’t want any shortening residue left on the fondant decorations, as then your fondant will taste more like shortening!
Step 2: Take some plastic wrap and cover each fondant decoration.
If your decorations are on the smaller side, you can put several decorations on one large piece of plastic wrap. For large or ornate decoration though, use a piece of plastic wrap for each.
Tightly enfold the fondant decorations with the plastic wrap, but not so tightly you cause pieces of the decorations to crumble off. Ensure there are no openings around the plastic wrap.
Step 3: You need an airtight seal, which is why you should next transfer your fondant decorations to a plastic container such as Tupperware.
Storing fondant pieces can be troublesome if you make large decorations. Don’t be afraid to look outside of the containers in your kitchen like Tupperware and use large storage containers instead.
Your fondant is wrapped up in plastic anyway, so it’s not going to cause any issues sitting in a storage container that you usually use for clothes or the kids’ soccer equipment.
Where Do You Store Fondant Decorations?
Okay, so your fondant is prepped and ready for storage. Where are you putting it? In a dark, room-temperature environment. A dark but cool place is okay too such as your pantry or cabinet.
Here’s where fondant shouldn’t go: in your fridge or freezer. I know, I know, whenever you want to store any food ingredients for a while, it’s always in the fridge or freezer.
Cold temperatures are one of fondant’s biggest enemies. Another is moisture.
Your fridge and freezer have both coldness and moisture in spades, so your fondant decorations should never go in your refrigerator or your freezer.
Fondant has one more enemy, and that’s sunlight. Well, that and artificial light too, especially fluorescents.
The sun will take those beautiful, vivid fondant colors and suck away their hue until you’re left with nothing but sad, faded decorations. That’s not at all what you want!
After all, you worked so hard on your fondant decorations. You want to see them on a beautifully decorated cake, not in the trash because they got ruined.
How to Store Fondant Decorations Overnight
You have a birthday party on the agenda tomorrow. You already know the day is going to be bonkers, so you wanted to do whatever you could early so you’d be less stressed on the big day.
That included making fondant decorations for the birthday cake. You only need the decorations to sit out until tomorrow when you can make the cake and then put the fondant on.
How do you store fondant for a short period?
The above method is really your best bet, even for short-term storage.
If you can provide a more humid environment for the fondant decorations, then you can skip the plastic wrap and storage container method. Humidity will prevent the fondant from drying too much.
That said, the amount of humidity required is a Goldilocks situation. Too little humidity and your fondant decorations will still dry out. Too much and they could melt!
How Long Can You Store Fondant Decorations?
After the birthday party was a smashing success and everyone raved about the cake, you decided you want to start baking with fondant decorations more often. Since then, you’ve whipped up some more decorations, but you won’t need them for quite a while.
How long will the fondant hold in plastic wrap and an airtight container?
In a room-temperature environment, your fondant is good for maybe two weeks. I’d check on it at the end of week one and midway into week two to ensure the quality hasn’t started to degrade.
Remember, when fondant is exposed to air, it begins to harden.
A little bit of hardening is okay and even necessary for the fondant to hold its shape.
The longer that air exposure occurs though, the more brittle the fondant becomes. If you leave your decorations out with no protection for days, you’re going to wake up one morning to find very hard fondant.
At that point, you can try microwaving the fondant in five-second increments. That should save it, but if it doesn’t, then you have no choice but to throw out your fondant (and thus all your hard work) and start over. Now you’re really going to be under the gun.
In a darker, cooler space (not your fridge, remember, but a pantry), the fondant might be good for upwards of a month, even two months.
I would again caution you to check on the fondant decorations every couple of weeks to confirm they’re in good shape.
How Far in Advance Can You Make Fondant Decorations?
Knowing everything you do now about fondant and what it doesn’t like (sunlight, cold temperatures, moisture), you’re concerned about making fondant too early.
There’s no need to be. Fondant has to dry a bit before it goes on a cake, as you now know. That’s why most bakers who roll out a strip of fondant rarely put it on the cake right away. They give it time to harden first.
You can make your fondant decorations with as little as one day’s notice and as far as five weeks ahead of when you’re baking a cake. Fondant is versatile like that.
I’ve even heard of bakers who make very nice, ornate fondant decorations (usually figurines), and then keep them for years to admire their handiwork. This probably isn’t something you’re looking to do, but it is within the realm of possibility.
If you leave the fondant in a room-temperature environment for weeks rather than years, what about ants and other critters?
Well, between the plastic container, the plastic wrap, and the closed kitchen pantry, insects should not be able to get to your fondant.
Let’s say you keep your fondant out overnight on your kitchen counter since your kitchen is room temperature. For such short-term storage, it’s unlikely a critter infestation is going to happen, be that ants or otherwise.
If you’re that concerned, wrap your fondant in plastic!