What Is Sugarpaste: All You Need To Know About This Icing

It's that time of the year when cake becomes one of the essential things. New year celebrations are incomplete without cakes, and who doesn’t love a good icing on the cake. Sugar paste is one form of icing which goes perfectly with any cake. Sugar paste is made from sucrose, glucose and is a sweet edible sugar dough. It is either referred to as sugar gum or gum paste. So, want to know more about sugarpaste? Chef Gauri Varma, Owner and Founder at Confect and G’s Patisserie, explains everything about it.

Sugar paste vs fondant

When we look at icing, sugar paste and fondant icing look very similar. This is because both are used for decorating purposes; yet, sugar paste differs from fondant icing. Initially, sugar paste is soft and flexible, but unlike fondant, it completely hardens and retains when dried, making it perfect for creating solid, intricate decorations. 

Sugarpaste: The perfect icing

Sugarpaste, in reality, gives a smooth, polished finish on top, which makes the cakes, cupcakes, and cookies look perfect, which makes it the best choice for covering and decorating cakes, cupcakes, and cookies. It also looks excellent if any photography is done. Sugarpaste is usually used for cutters and molds. Sugarpaste is also the perfect icing for the cake toppers to decorate and look beautiful and edible.

Range of fondants

There is a varied range of fondants, each used for different work in the bakery.

1. Rolled fondant: The most used fondant is rolled fondant, which is similar to a rolled-out plain pie dough and is often used to drape over the cakes as icing to cover them, as well as they are cut into strips or shapes for decoration.
2. Poured fondant: On the other hand, poured fondant is fluid and creamy and is often used either as a coating or filling for pastries, cakes, candies, and other desserts as a whole. 
3. Gum paste: Finally, gum paste is the only kind of rolled fondant which becomes completely hard when it dries. This is often used to build intricate structures like flowers, humans, and sculptures on top of birthday and anniversary cakes.