Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

I am literally in a cake decorating nightmare right now, I am in the middle of doing the Santa Claus…it is too hot in aus to use modelling chocolate so I tried to use fondant for his arms. Paul does not give us any other alternatives in the class. The arms are far too heavy to stay on and I don’t know what to do!,,

Hi sandilee

You could use fondant with some tylose through it. Try 1 teaspoon of tylose powder to 250 g of fondant.
This is the amount we would normally use to make gumpaste but if you’re experiencing hot humid weather this amount will give the fondant enough strength to keep its form. Knead the powder through the fondant, you’ll feel it stiffen up a little. Rest it for about half and hour then use it as you would normal fondant. Support the arms with wooden skewers or how ever Paul has shown in the tutorial. Addition support with anything else to keep them in place. I haven’t had a chance to watch the tutorial but when I’ve had heavy limbs this is how I cover them. The other thing you can do is use half and half, that’s have fondant and half chocolate paste and run some tylose through it. Keep your hands very cool, dunk them in either a bowl of ice water of crushed ice, dry them well before handling the paste and don’t over knead as this will over soften the chocolate paste. If you don’t have air con run a fan to help the air circulation.
Take a deep breath, don’t panic! Hope some of this helps.

Hi sandielee

I’ve just read your comment on the RKT thread and it occurred to me that you could also knead cool melted chocolate into you modelling chocolate to strengthen it. I’ve done it heaps of times, if you want to try it experiment on a small amount first.