Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

I have recently taken up cake decorating and have been asked to make a friends daughter her confirmation cake.I want to try chocolate ganache with fondant icing but it is 105 dgs here in Spain and I dont know if that would hold up in these temperatures.Any suggestions please

I live in Australia and I’ve been cake decorating for over 10 years now. I use dark chocolate ganache under all of my fondant these days and I find that it is very stable even in really hot weather.
White chocolate ganache isn’t that good in hot weather, but will generally hold it’s shape if no one touches it, but it will melt.
As dark choc ganache has a higher cocoa solid percentage than white chocolate, it is more stable in hot weather. The higher the percentage the harder the ganache. Over 43% cocoa solids will make a very firm dark chocolate ganache, as it is dark chocolate it can also be quite bitter, so I usually make a sugar syrup and brush that onto the cake before I ganache. Once the ganache has set and it’s ready for the fondant, I brush some more syrup onto the ganache and then cover it with fondant. My FB cake page is Cedar Blossom Cakes.

I use dark chocolate ganache with success here in Crete, my last cake was a 10″ chocolate with ganache and white sugar paste, it kept fine in a dark room despite temperatures of 30.

That said, I still prefer marzipan under the sugarpaste but would not attempt buttercream again after it melted and ran out from under the paste while in the sun at the reception.  You can’t control what other people do with your cakes, luckily I was able to mop it up with paper towels and no one was any the wiser.

Thank you Marjorie,I have only ever used marzipan on fruitcake could i use it on a sponge ?

Will definitely give the dark chocolate a go now.

Thank you Ozgirl42 for the info I will follow your advice re sugar syrup.Ichecked out your site and your cakes are amazing you are obviously very talented.!!

I made the mistake of using buttercream under fondant and the day of the event was in the high 30’s (celsius). After a few hours I realised that the top of the cake was slooooowwwwly tipping backwards because the buttercream was melting under the fondant! No more buttercream for this little black duck!