Look away, precision baking purists, and gather ’round all ye sweet treat hobbyists, for yet another divisive confection trick is icing the internet. This one uses the store-bought frosting that typically approximates airy buttercream and microwaves it to more closely resemble fondant’s comparatively rigid finish. The tub simply gets nuked in 30-second intervals until its contents are thin and smooth enough to pour over a cooled cake in one fine layer, giving you a faux fondant of sorts.
While buttercream is anecdotally associated with scratch-made bakes, or even the upgraded boxed cake variety, fondant is linked with reality TV cooking competitions or high headcount weddings. Its tight, sleek tailoring signals professionalism, plus it’s easier to fashion into stunt cakes that exist as much for social media moments as they do for actual dessert. The microwave hack can be a bit of a time saver, making it easier to ice your cake in general, and it does deliver a similar appearance, especially through a camera lens, even as it won’t perform, or taste, like real fondant.
How DIY microwaved fondant holds up to the real deal
If all you want is the pristine, glassy textured finish that fondant provides, but with minimal effort, microwaved Pillsbury is a decently effective cheat code. You could even apply it to your Trader Joe’s petit fours hack for a one-two efficiency punch. But this store-bought frosting hack only gives you one chance to pour and coat your cake, without the workability of a rolled fondant.
The visually convincing enough faux fondant hack is closer in use to poured fondant, which is applied exactly how it sounds. But the latter’s surface will have more shine, its texture will be denser, and it will taste less sweet. Rolled fondant can be trickier to get the hang of, as it can seem like handling wet wallpaper at first, but its moldable, soft clay-like texture allows for more precision. Rolled fondant’s taste is also more subdued, and sometimes even derided, but a crumb coat of something like a better vanilla buttercream beneath typically hides out as a de facto culinary Cyrano.
