How to Keep Premade Fondant Decorations Soft (2024)

Sometimes, you want to make decorations ahead of time to use on a cake later. It really lowers the stress of doing things last minute.

There are a few ways to keep premade fondant decorations soft and pliable for weeks, so they’re ready to use when you go to decorate your cake.

In this post, I talk about why you’d want to keep fondant decorations soft and why you might not want to. I’ll also go through how to do that and my answer some FAQs when working with fondant decorations.

Through trial and error, I’ve figured out ways to make cake decorating easier. For example, awhile back, I was asked to make thiscake that included tons of fondant scroll-work on it.

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This cake was a two-sided cake, so it was very involved, plus they had ordered cupcakes to go along with it. I needed a plan.

I knew I would have to pre-make most of the fondant items and I had to come up with a way to keep premade fondant decorations soft and pliable for later, because I wouldn’t be able to work with them if they were hardened. So I set out to do some experiments.

Below are the molds I used to make most of my scrolls and my small roses. You can find a similar scroll mold here. (The Wilton one I used has apparently been discontinued.) You can find the rose mold here.

Next I tried creating some fondant scrolls and putting them in a plastic container layered between wax paper and then sealing the container. Well, that didn’t work…they still hardened up too much.

I even tried putting them into ziplock bags and then into a container and that STILL didn’t do the trick. I needed something that would totally seal out any air.

In fact, my youngest step-son said the best thing he could think to get me for Christmas was an econo-sized box of Press-n-Seal.

By the way, you can get my tips for freezing cakes and cupcakes here. It’ll pretty much prove to you how much I love that stuff.

What finally worked was I pulled out a strip of press-n-seal and laid it on the table, sticky side up.

I made enough scrolls to cover half of the rectangle and set them on top of the press-n-seal. I made sure to leave space between each item and enough space at the edges of the press-n-seal.

Then I took the other end of the rectangle and folded it over the fondant items.

I took my finger and pressed the top layer of press-n-seal into the bottom layer to stick them together. I did this first between all of the fondant items and then I sealed the edges.

This completely seals off any air from getting to the fondant pieces. You want to be careful not to smash them when you’re sealing around them. The press-n-seal forms a sort of bubble around each piece.

I picked up these little packets and laid them in layers into a plastic container. You can fill up your container with these (as long as they aren’t large, heavy pieces) and then snap a lid on it.

Keep these out of the sun and in a cool area of your house. I have a small closet I use to store my fondant in. You can even freeze them and they’ll be fine.

See Also

Rolled Fondant - Recipes & Instructions

This totally worked for me! I made them weeks ahead of time and they stayed exactly the same as when I had put them into the container!

The day I put this cake together, all I had to do was pull apart the press-n-seal and attach the scrolls to the cake with a little water. It worked beautifully.

Oh and in case you want to see the back…here ya go…

Now, I won’t say this method is perfect for every situation, but it did work for me. If you have decorative items that aren’t textured, this may not work for you.

When you seal around each item, it sort of forms a little bubble around it to keep it safe, but if the press-n-seal gets a little wrinkled under it, you might get a little texture from thepress-n-seal imprinted on your items.

If your items aretextured and don’t need to be super smooth, it’ll work great for you.

The thing about this method is that it doesn’t just work for scroll work. It can work for a lot of different applications.

You might need to add a plaque to your cake, but you don’t want to make it on decorating day. If you’ve got a round cake, that plaque is going to have to be curved around it.

If it dries flat, well it just won’t look right when you attach it to the cake. You could just dry it on a foam cake dummy the same size of the cake you’ll be making, but what if you don’t have one handy?

This tip might be your best option. Make the plaque, seal it in a press-n-seal pocket to keep it pliable. If you need it to harden up, just slightly so it doesn’t get misshapen when you attach it to your cake, just let it sit out for a bit.

Now let’s go into some FAQs…

You can even add your decor to freezer bags and freeze them flat if you have the space. Once they defrost, they’ll be soft and pliable as long as you didn’t let the fondant harden before you froze the decorations.

Also note that when you defrost the fondant decorations, there will be some amount of condensation. So, if you have very intricate designs that are darkly colored, you could potentially have some discoloration.

The most important thing is that you do not touch the decorations while the have condensation on them. That will mess up the texture.

If you want to go with the freezing method, then go ahead and make a small test fondant decoration, freeze it and then defrost it to see how it goes. If it works, then you know what you can do.

If it doesn’t work, then you know that you’ll need to do a little more experimenting, but it sure beats figuring out something didn’t work right when you’re in the middle of decorating a cake.

I really hope these tips help you out in a future project and that you’ll be able to do things in advance. I LOVE saving myself stress and I hope these tips save you stress as well.

Other posts you might like:

• Tips for Making Your First Fondant Cake
• How to Store a Cake
• Common Cake Decorating Terms and What they Mean

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