Gold Crackled Fondant Is A Beautiful Texture For Many Different Cake Applications
Gold crackled fondant is so beautiful and easy to make! All you need is some fondant, non-toxic or edible gold paint, everclear or rose water, confectioners glaze, a blow torch and a rolling pin! I love the beautiful effect the gold crackle has on a simple tiered cake or you can use it on sculpted cakes for a reptile scale or weathered look. Check out my cute sea turtle cake tutorial to see how this gold crackled fondant looks on a sculpted cake.
I first fell in love with the gold crackled look from that amazing work from Angela Morrison. Her technique uses gumpaste over fondant and is really beautiful as well!
How To Make Gold Crackle
Making gold crackle is easier than you think. Here are the supplies that you’re going to need.
Gold Crackled Fondant Materials List
Fondant
Creme brulee torch
Confectioners glaze
Corn starch
Non-toxic gold or edible gold (note: if you use the edible gold paint then you don’t need confectioners glaze)
Everclear, rosewater or lemon extract
Rolling pin
X-acto blade
Fondant smoother
Chilled Cake
How To Achieve Crackle Fondant On A Cake
First roll out your fondant to about half as thick as you normally would. Torch the surface with your creme brulee torch until the surface is nicely toasted. If there are any light spots, that place will not crackle.
Paint the surface with confectioners glaze then paint it with your gold/everclear mixture. Let dry completely to avoid the gold from flaking off when you crack it with your rolling pin.
Crackle your fondant by rolling it out with your rolling pin. Go in both directions. The more you roll, the bigger the cracks will be. I prefer to keep my cracks pretty small.
Now you can cover your cake in one piece or you can panel it depending on the final look you are going for.
Edible Crackle Paint
If you want to make a crackle that isn’t gold, you can paint the surface of your fondant with food coloring and it will crackle the same way. I used black airbrush for this crackled fondant tutorial but you could use any type of food coloring. Just paint it on and let it dry. Edible artist decorative paints are great for this because it dries really fast.
For the inside of this cake I used my delicious vanilla cake recipe from scratch filled with easy buttercream frosting. I always make sure my cakes are fully chilled before covering with fondant.
Gold Crackled Fondant
How to make a beautiful gold crackled texture on fondant. This recipe is enough to cover one 6" round cake plus a little leftover.
Ingredients
Gold Crackled Fondant
- 1 1/2 lbs fondant
- 1 tsp confectioners glaze
- 2 tsp Non-toxic gold or edible gold
Instructions
Tools Needed
Creme brulee torch
Corn starch duster
Rolling pin
X-acto blade
Fondant smoother
Chilled Cake
Roll out fondant to half as thick as your normally do. Torch the surface of the fondant until it's brown and bubbly. Let cool.
Brush the surface of the fondant with confectioners glaze. Combine your everclear and gold dust to make a paint. Paint over the glaze and let dry fully. At least 10 minutes.
Use a bench scraper to loosen the fondant from the table and then using a rolling pin, roll out your fondant to the desired thickness. The more you roll, the thicker the cracks will be. I like thinner cracks.
Cover your cake in one piece as you would normally or panel to keep the texture more intact.
Recipe Video
Recipe Notes
Gold crackled fondant is so beautiful on a cake! Learn how to make two ways, traditional and paneled fondant.
awesome TFS
This is so fantastic, what an amazing technique. I can’t wait to try it, thank you for sharing your time and talents!
Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed it!
That was awesome!!! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed it!
Incredible – thank you so much 🙂
Que es glaseado de pasteleria
Hi, that was really Awesome 😍. Can we make without confectioners glaze?
Yes but you would have to use a gold paint like rainbow dust gold, poppy paint or edible artist decorative paints
Seriously cool technique, thank you for sharing!
Hola Es un efecto muy elegante sencillo y bello . Me gustaría saber si quiero darle el mismo efecto en color rosa , se haría del mismo modo? . Mil gracias
maravilhoso .
Hi, I was wondering if this could be done on covered cake?
Hi there, what do you mean covered?
Wow..thisbis great. I am trying to make a solid gold top…can you please advise which paint was used in the video?
This is non-toxic gold from Truly Mad Plastics
Hi what do you mean by confectioners glaze?
Confectioners glaze is an ingredient. Check the link in the materials list
Great tutorial! Have a question what’s confectioners glaze? I can not find it in my country. Do you have the recipe ? Thanks
You can use another paint like poppy paints, edible artist decorative paints or rainbow dust gold paint
Beautiful tutorial
I am in love with this effect! It’s gorgeous! Just one question, did you mean to put roll the fondant twice as thick as you normally would instead of half as thick? Thank you for sharing!
Yes the fondant needs to be thicker than it normally is so that when you roll it out the rest of the way it’s not too thin
This is great.knowledge is real power. Thanks for shearing with us
Can you use other colors? I’m looking for this technique using black.
Absolutely, check out the other tutorial crackled fondant in the tutorials section https://sugargeekshow.com/class/crackled-fondant-tutorial/
Love it! thanks for the demo! Love all these tutorials you do!
Thanks! So happy to hear it
Can’t wait to try this!!!
Thank you for this tutorial.
Amazeballs!! I just love this idea. I want to do this technique with a peach colour. Can I use normal peach lustre dust with rosewater and paint it like you did?
Yes you could but I would do a small test first to practice getting the crackle right before you do it on a big cake
Very nice realy u r brilliant chef
Ooohhh totally trying this! I just need the blow torch. Will any type of kitchen torch do, or is there a type you recommend? Also, when I cover my cakes I spritz them with sugar water (equal parts corn syrup and water) to get the fondant to adhere properly to the SMB or ganache. What do you use? Great tutorial!
I don’t use anything to spritz my cakes but if the ganache is dry then I will use water. I use a creme brulee torch, see the link in the blog post
Thank you. I did click on the link but it didn’t bring up the product page. I’m sure any type of creme brulee type torch should work fine.
Love this. Must try on my cakes. Thank you very much for sharing.
Wow! I love the technique,thanks so much for sharing,God bless u
Can you use hold/silver leaf to get this crackled effect?
Yes just put the gold/silver leaf over the confectioners glaze instead of the gold paint
Has anyone attempted this technique with MMF?
I have with my LMF recipe
I will give it a trial
Hello, I loved IT. I have a cuestión. What do you use whit This non-toxic gold from Truly Mad Plastics to make the paint? Alcohol, water??
Grain alcohol, I use everclear
You say to roll the fondant half as thick as normal. But I think you mean twice as thick right? Since you’ll be rolling it again it should be thicker.
This looks amazing and I will be trying soon.
Haha yes you are correct, sorry about that
Wow this is amazing, cant wait to try this, one quick question after torching the fondant could you air brush with gold airbrush paint?
Yes you could! Great idea
Hi,
Love the gold crackle, but I was wondering do you have a photo of the same crackle affect in silver please. Really would love to use this on my daughters 21st cake but not sure if the silver will look as impressive as your gold. Thank you.
No I don’t but I imagine it would look just as good
Hi,
Thank you for replying.
The base cake is 8” round, what thickness fondant do you recommend to use on all your cake sizes please?
I have the brand satin ice in fondant.
Sorry for all the questions, is your cake crumb coated in butter cream and do you mine if you could give me the recipe for your butter cream. Last question could I crumb coat in white ganache and use your crackle fondant and if so do I need to dampen the outside for the ganache for the crackle fondant to stick. Thank you again
Hi, you are amazing, actually awesome cake decorator and I desperately need your advice. I love love your crackle affect but I only have Satin Ice fondant and need to know will I be able to get this same crackle affect using this Satin Ice fondant please? Did you use
You can use whatever fondant you want 🙂
So sorry but I was going to ask what is the name brand of the fondant you use with this crackle affect please?
It’s my fondant recipe or you can use whatever brand you like to buy. I buy renshaw americas when I don’t make my own