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Hello and welcome to Cupcake Addiction's Puffy Fondant Bow Tutorial where I'll be showing
you how to make this gorgeous and totally edible puffy fondant bows.
Tools and equipment that we will be using today:
I have just a small ruler. I have a fondant rolling pin. If you don't
have a fondant rolling pin, a regular household rolling pin will do. But if you are planning
on doing a bit of work with fondant in the future, these plastic fondant rolling pins
are fantastic. They stick a lot less than a wooden rolling pin or a marble rolling pin
would and they're nice and small and easy to work with.
I have a standard paintbrush. It's not a particularly expensive paintbrush. It has quite a fine
tip on it. I have a standard sharp kitchen knife.
I have a pizza cutter. You don't need a pizza cutter. But I find this to be a really good
way to cut the fondant and saves ripping and pulling of the fondant.
I have a [4-inch] cake board. I'm going to use this to rest my finished bow on. You don't
need a [4-inch] cake board but you do need something to rest your bow in both as you're
working on it and when you're finished. I've got a couple of cotton wool balls, just
standard cotton wool balls and you will need two of those for each bow that you're planning
on making. I have some water just in the shot glass there,
just a little bit of water. That's going to act as our glue.
I have a little bit of Tylose. If you haven't used Tylose before, it is a white powder and
it's available at all good cake decorating shops. We add that to fondant to make sure
that the fondant completely hardens when it dries. If you don't have Tylose to go with
fondant, you can also use gumpaste instead which you wouldn't need to add anything to.
If you don't use the Tylose in the fondant, the fondant won't set properly and you won't
get the same sturdiness out of your puffy bow.
I have a cornflour shaker so it's really just a coffee chocolate shaker which I've filled
up with a little bit of cornflour. I have my golf-sized ball of pre-colored yellow
fondant which I have on a snap lock bag. Always get your fondant in snap lock bags, never
in cling wrap or cling [foam] because this dries it out. The snap lock bags are the best
option for storing your fondant. So let's get started.
First of all, I'm going to prepare my surface. So I'm just going to give myself a bit of
room out of all these...away from all these tools. You do want a little bit of room to
work with here because we are going to be rolling that fondant out.
So we'll take our ball of fondant out of the bag, as I mentioned, just a golf-sized ball.
I'm just going to make a well in the middle and I'm going to take a pinch of Tylose. So
just a pinch between your finger, sprinkle it in and just knead that for about 30 seconds
until that Tylose is all worked in. Quite easy. Now with this fondant, what we want
to do is we want to roll it into a nice ball shape. This is how you should always start
working with fondant, in a nice round seamless ball. It just helps to get a (Inaudible 03:04)
cracks out of the fondant. Now before I finish rolling up, I'm actually going to roll it
down into a bit more of a sausage shape. Alright, we're going to sprinkle some cornflour,
not too much, just enough to give us a nice covering. And I'm going to put that fondant
down, and just rub it around in that cornflour to give the bottom of it a nice even coat.
Now the reason I rolled it in to a sausage and not a ball is because we're going to make
a rectangle shape. It's just a bit easy to get a rectangle out of a sausage than it is
to get a rectangle out of a ball. So you can see I'm just taking that fondant rolling pin
and I'm just rolling it back and forth. I'm making a nice long rectangle.
Okay, so we've rolled our fondant out. It's about the width of 2 credit cards, maybe just
a little bit thicker. But you don't want it to be too thick because we want these bows
to be as fine as we can. What I'm going to do with my measurements:
when you're measuring for your bow, take into account the size of the bow this way. You
want to measure a piece. Your starting piece will be twice the length. So this one here
is about 9 centimeters and that will be about an 18 centimeters length that we would start
off with. You can make them any size you like. But just bear that in mind that your finished
product will be half the size of the length of the fondant you start with.
Now I'm going to just roll a nice straight edge or just cut a nice straight edge along
there. My piece of fondant is about 15 centimeters long so I think that's a great starting point
for my size of my bow. Now if it's 15 centimeters long, I'm going to make it...I want my finished
bow to be about this wide. I'm going to give it about an extra centimeter on the width
that I want my finished product to be. I will show you a while shortly. Beautiful!
Now while I'm here, I'm also going to take another... cut another strip. And it's just
going to be this ruler length, ruler width wide. Beautiful!
While we're not using this fondant, I'm going to pop it underneath that snap lock bag just
so it doesn't get too much air getting to it. Alright, now I'll just cut my edges nice
and neat here. This fondant (Inaudible 05:30). Okay, now with this bow, we turn it over so
that we're working with the back that's got the cornflour on it. We take a little bit
of this water on our paintbrush, just a little bit. Less is more with the water, so one dip.
And you just spread that water out along the edge and the same for this other edge. If
you do use too much water with fondant, you are headed for disaster. A little bit acts
as a glue and a lot will actually eat through the fondant. And it will cost it to not stick
properly and you'll find that your whole structure falls apart.
Alright, so what I've done now, I've just folded over a little...about a half a centimeter
border on both sides of my long edges. Now I'm going to take my 2 cotton wool balls.
Try and get 2 that are about the same size. You can tear them off if you need to just
to look good. And I'm going to sit them in the middle of what will be my puffy bows.
A little bit of water in the middle which would be our glue. So I'm going to hold that
cotton ball in place, I'm going to fold that bow over and I want to secure to the water
this edge here but I want to secure it inside that half centimeter border. It will just
help be a little bit neater. So we do that for both sides. You can already see I've got
a nice little puff going on there. Now I'm going to take this additional length that
we've cut. And I'm going to just cut off a piece, about half the length, 7 or 8centimeters
for this one. But if it's a bit too long, it's not a big deal. You can just trim it.
I'm going to take my water and I'm just going to spread my water down the length of it there.
Alright, now this is where it gets a little tricky so stay with me. I'm going to lift
that bow up. I'm going to place it in the middle. And then I'm going to pull this side
down and pull this side up. Meet them in the middle. Try to get as much cornflour off your
hands. Now as I lift the bow up, I'm going to squeeze it. And as I squeeze it, you can
see that lovely puffy bow forming. You can feel free to work it a little bit with your
fingers. Alright, now at this stage, while I'm holding
it. I still got a nice little stable back to hold on to. I'm going to take my knife
and I'm just going to put 3 nice little marks there, 3 nice little marks there. Now, on
the back, I'm just going to take this little extra piece, I'm just going to cut it off
with a knife. Do be careful. I probably shouldn't be cutting towards myself but... Alright,
so just neaten that up a little bit at the back. You'll always have a bit of a seam there
but it's alright. Back's generally up against the cake. I bit of cornflour on that one,
so we're just going to brush that off. But don't you worry if there's a little bit left,
we can get our brush later and fix that up. Alright, so that's the main part of our puffy
bow. Now I like to sit mine up like this to dry.
And as I mentioned, you can just work with the tops there. You do want to remember to
leave enough gap at the top there because once you're finished, once this is completely
dry, you're going to want to pull those 2 cotton balls out with a pair of tweezers.
So just make sure that you've got enough of an opening. You can see it's still quite flexible.
So if you want to lift it up, if you want to change the amount of puff that you've got,
you know, you can really work it to see how puffy you want it and how stubby you want
the sides. Now I've still got a bit of fondant left so
I'm going to make the lovely little bow tails, or little bow [hands], I suppose you call
them these little bits. Just roll that back up. A little bit more cornflour. I'll roll
into the sausage again. Just roll it out. Okay, there's no exact measurement for this.
I would make them about the same width as that middle piece. We don't want them quite
as wide as the bow. You definitely want them to be a bit thinner than that but so long
as they're both roughly the same. Okay, see how well that pizza cutter just
chops through there? So I'm just going to even up my ends so that I've got the same
with the fondant. Now that piece, I'm just going to cut it down
the middle. It doesn't have to be exact but as close to the middle as you can is good.
I'm going to take my knife. And I'm just going to cut my little tails...like so. Lovely!
Alright, now we're going to take our water once again and I'm just going to put a little
bit at the top of this one and a little bit at top of this one.
I'm going to go back with the little board that I'm drying them on. I'm going to place
them down on the board. Now when I place them down, I want to overlap. See how I'm overlapping
them just a little bit? This will actually form the base so you will be able to pick
this whole bow up and move it around. I'm going to take my puffy bow. Make sure
that I'm happy with the puff and everything. And then I'm going to sit it down. And as
I sit, I'm going to push it down so that it actually sits nicely on those tails.
Now the trick with the bow is you don't want it to look too stiff because bows aren't.
They're quite fluid. So something like this is fantastic to actually
rest the bows on because it gives you a little bit of a... I supposed somewhere for the tails
to overhang. You might just use this for now or you can rest it on the edge of your bench.
Now with this one, I love to [take] the paintbrush, just curl it up underneath there. You can
see there, we're just giving a little bit of fluidity to that bottom tail. You might
want to curl up one of those ends. Now as I mentioned, don't worry about that
cornflour. Once it is completely dry, you will be able to take a fine brush or paint
brush or something like that or just your fingers and you will be able to dust most
of that cornflour off which will leave you with a beautiful finished product.
Leave that one, I would say, overnight before adding it to a cake to dry. And then you've
got yourself a beautiful puffy fondant bow. Thanks for watching!