I made LOTS of fondant yesterday (seriously, I used about 6 pounds of sugar!) and experimented  a bit:

I’ve always used agar agar flakes to make it, but I was somewhat annoyed with how long it took for them to fully dissolve.  This one step often took more than 15 minutes and for something that I don’t necessarily enjoy doing, this was entirely too long.  Making fondant, to me, is somewhat of a pain– first you have to sift all that powdered sugar and then you have to wait for the flakes to dissolve.  Don’t get me wrong– homemade fondant is so far superior to storebought that it’s worth the effort.  But yesterday, I needed to make a batch of white and a few batches of chocolate.  That’s potentially 45 minutes or more of just waiting for the agar flakes too dissolve!

Enter agar powder.  I’ve tried this before and I think I used too much powder for the amount of water in the recipe.  When using powdered agar, generally the ration is 1 tsp of powder to 1 TB of flakes.  And in a recipe, you can generally substitute 1:1 agar flakes for gelatin.  So I used powder and it did indeed cut down on “dissolve time.”

If you use my fondant recipe, follow as directed, except use about 1 1/2 tsp of agar powder for the agar flakes.  You may need to add a little bit more water if it becomes too pasty.  The brand of powder I used (pictured left) even has vanilla flavoring in it, so you can get that vanilla taste into your fondant without using vanilla extract, which will give your fondant an off-white color.

Side Note:  I found this brand of agar at the Asian market.  Be careful when you buy it because it also comes in red and green (as in it has red and green coloring added to it) and all three packages are identical.  Read the ingredients list before throwing it into your cart.

The difference between using powder over flakes:

1. Once dissolved, the water will become gelatinous, but you are left with more liquid than if you use flakes.  This means that you will need much more sugar to get the right consistency.  Plan on using more like 9 cups per recipe (which will produce more fondant per batch).
2. The consistency of the finished product is near perfect once all of the sugar gets kneaded in.  The problem I find when using flakes is that the fondant reaches a perfect consistency after it has been allowed to sit for several days.  On the day it’s made, I find it to be a little too soft to use right away.
3. You won’t have to worry about having bits of undissolved flakes floating around your fondant.

The verdict for me is that powder is better than flakes here.  It dissolves faster and produces a better finished product.  My next fondant experiment will be to see if I can use my stand mixer with the dough hook attachment to knead in the sugar, rather than by doing it by hand.  The process of kneading in the sugar is very similar to kneading bread dough so it stands to reason that it should work.  Stay tuned!