Marzipan, fondant & sugar pastes: composition, workability, colouring and covering cakes

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One word, four very different materials

A confectioner covering and decorating a cake reaches for a small family of sugar-based media that look related but behave completely differently. The single biggest source of confusion is the word "fondant", which means two unrelated things:

• Confectioner's (poured / cream) fondant — a soft, glossy paste of microscopic sugar crystals in a saturated syrup, warmed and poured to glaze éclairs, fondant fancies and mille-feuille.
• Rolled fondant icing — what the UK trade calls sugarpaste: a pliable sugar dough rolled into a sheet and draped over a cake to cover it.

Add marzipan (ground almonds and sugar) and the firmer gum / flower / modelling pastes (sugarpaste plus extra gum), and you have four materials with four different governing properties. Get the property right and the material does what you want; get it wrong and you crack, sweat, bleed colour or kill the gloss. The headline map is in the three-families comparison table below.

This article is the practical foundation: what each medium is made of, the one property that controls it, how to work it, and the food-safety and colouring rules that catch people out. For decorative pulled/blown sugar and isomalt showpieces see A6-sugar-work-techniques; for mirror glazes and nappages see A6-glazes-finishes.

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Marzipan & almond paste — it's all about the almond:sugar ratio

Marzipan and almond paste are the same two ingredients — ground blanched almonds and sugar — in different proportions, and that ratio is the whole story.

• Almond paste has the higher almond-to-sugar ratio. It is softer and more almond-forward, used as a filling (frangipane, stollen, almond croissants).
• Marzipan has more sugar, which makes it firm and smooth enough to roll, mould and sculpt — so it is the covering and modelling grade.

The trade designation "marzipan" is surprisingly loose: German confectionery standards (Leitsätze) — the primary source for these ratios, not a single binding EU Regulation — permit a ratio as low as 50 parts marzipan paste to 50 parts added sugar. Quality is signalled by going the other way — standard Lübeck marzipan is at least 70:30, and Lübeck fine marzipan (Edelmarzipan) is 90:10 (only 10% added sugar). The raw paste itself (Rohmasse) is at least ~65% almond (no more than ~35% sugar). Marzipan is also characterised by its almond-oil (fat) content, which rises with grade rather than by any single legal "minimum almond-oil" figure: Lübeca specifies its M0 raw paste at a minimum 27% almond oil and a maximum 17% moisture. (An earlier "~14% minimum almond oil" figure was removed in numeric review — it was not supported by its cited source and is not a recognised standard.)

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The raw material, and a real food-safety number

Marzipan is only as good as its almonds. The catalogue Ground Almonds (blanched almond meal) spec is a clean reference: 100% blanched sweet almonds, about 52.5 g fat and 21.4 g protein per 100 g, supplied in grades of regular <2.2 mm, fine <1.8 mm and extra-fine <1.4 mm. The spec also declares a cross-contact allergen statement: may contain traces of hazelnut, walnut, cashew and pistachio — confirm this is acceptable for your application. For a smooth marzipan you want the finer grinds.

The food-safety point that follows the almond all the way into the finished marzipan is aflatoxin. The almond spec caps total aflatoxins at 10 ppb and aflatoxin B1 at 8 ppb, which match the EU Regulation 2023/915 limits for almonds placed on the market for the final consumer (ready-to-eat). Buy almonds with a current aflatoxin certificate; it is a real, regulated hazard, not a formality.

Regulatory note: Cross-checked against EU 2023/915 Annex I (and Food Safety Magazine's summary), the 8 / 10 ppb figures are the ready-to-eat (final-consumer) almond limits; almonds destined for sorting or other physical treatment before sale carry the higher 12 / 15 ppb limits. The lower 2 / 4 ppb figures that are sometimes quoted are the groundnut (peanut) ready-to-eat limits and do not apply to tree-nut almonds. The almond limit applies directly to processed products that are ≥80% almonds; lower-almond products such as standard marzipan instead inherit an assessed level under the regulation's dilution/proportion rules. Confirm the exact product category against the live Annex before advising on compliance.

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Persipan — the almond-free look-alike (with a safety note)

Persipan is a cheaper marzipan substitute made from apricot or peach kernels instead of almonds, typically about 40% kernels to 60% sugar (single trade reference; verify composition against supplier specification or applicable standard). Two things matter:

1. Safety: the kernels naturally contain amygdalin, a cyanogenic glycoside that must be detoxified before use — persipan is a processed product, never raw kernels. Food safety: EFSA 2016 established an acute reference dose of 20 µg HCN/kg bodyweight for apricot kernels (EFSA-Q-2015-00545); EU recommendations exist on monitoring HCN in stone-fruit products. EU-market persipan suppliers must demonstrate HCN has been reduced to safe levels — request HCN certificates.
2. Labelling & allergens: industry practice requires persipan to be labelled as persipan (not marzipan); it usually contains ~0.5% starch so it can be told apart by an iodine test (both the EU labelling obligation and the 0.5% starch figure rest on a single trade reference — verify against applicable EU/national regulation). Because persipan contains no almonds, it is not a tree-nut-almond product, which is useful for almond allergy — but it must never be passed off as marzipan.

The full ratio table is below. Catalogue note: the spec sheet attached to the catalogue "Marzipan 50%" product is, on inspection, a white poppy-seed filling datasheet — it has been mis-attached and was not used here; the correct Zeelandia marzipan datasheet should be requested before any marzipan spec numbers are published.

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Poured fondant — crystallisation is everything

Confectioner's fondant is the glossy glaze on an éclair or a fondant fancy. Technically it is a partially-crystalline product: a huge number of tiny sucrose crystals suspended in a saturated sugar syrup. The magic number is crystal size: the crystals are around 20 micrometres — small enough that the tongue cannot feel them, which is exactly why good fondant is silky and glossy rather than gritty.

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A typical formulation is sucrose 64–71%, glucose syrup 9–16% and water ~20%, and the water content (10–15% in the finished fondant) sets its hardness. The glucose syrup is not a filler — it is a doctoring agent: its larger sugar molecules physically get between the sucrose molecules and stop them joining into big, gritty crystals. Invert sugar (sucrose split into glucose and fructose by heat and acid) does the same job.

Making it is a controlled crystallisation: boil the syrup (a small batch goes to ~118°C), cool it undisturbed in a thin ~5 mm layer to 45–50°C so it becomes supersaturated, then beat it for 20–30 minutes so it nucleates a vast number of small crystals all at once. This is why you buy it ready-made: factory fondant gives reliable crystal size every time.

Food safety: Boiling sugar syrup at 118°C causes severe burns on skin contact; professional bakers must apply appropriate PPE (heat-resistant gloves, long sleeves) in line with workplace safety regulations.

Working ready-made poured fondant

The catalogue offers several poured fondants, and their spec sheets agree on the handling rules (full comparison in the poured-fondant spec table below):

• Zeelandia Fondant Ready — sugar, glucose syrup, water, E471, guar (E412) and citric acid (E330); dry matter 85%; heat to 40–48°C, stirring, then glaze warm or cooled cake surfaces.
• Vortumnus Sugar Glaze (water pomade) — a fine-crystalline pomade of sugar, glucose syrup and water; total extract ≥87%; thinned by mixing 50–100 ml water per 1 kg at no more than 60°C.
• Arctos Ultra White Fondant and Arctos Fondant 30 — Fondant 30 is as pure as it gets: sugar, glucose syrup and water only. Both are fine-crystalline, dry substance 87.5–88.5%, and both carry the same warning: do not overheat above 50°C and do not add more than 10% water.

That last rule is the one to tattoo on the bench. Overheat poured fondant and you dissolve the fine crystals that give it gloss and set — it comes out dull, runny and slow to firm. Over-thin it with water and it never sets. Re-warm gently to 40–48°C; never boil. The same fondants can be coloured, flavoured or even cut with a little fruit concentrate or alcohol.

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Rolled fondant icing / sugarpaste — humectant + gum

Now the other fondant: the rolled sheet you drape over a celebration cake. In the UK this is sugarpaste; in the US it is rolled fondant; they are the same thing. Its job is to stay soft, smooth and pliable long enough to roll thin and stretch over a cake without cracking — and the spec sheets show exactly how it is engineered to do that.

Across the Zeelandia Roll Dekor, PA Foods and Doric spec sheets the same backbone appears:

• Sugar / icing sugar — the bulk.
• Glucose syrup — pliability and anti-crystallisation.
• A humectant — glycerine (E422) and/or sorbitol (E420) — this is the key. It holds moisture in the paste so it stays soft and resists cracking.
• A little fat / vegetable shortening — smoothness and release.
• A gum / stabiliser — gum tragacanth (E413), CMC (E466) and/or xanthan (E415) — elasticity so it stretches instead of tearing.
• Emulsifier (E471), preservative (potassium sorbate E202) and an acidity regulator (citric acid E330).

The result is a paste at roughly 88–91% dry matter — shelf-stable through low water activity and the preservative, which is why a 7.5–10 kg pack keeps for months. Good covering paste is also quality-tested for exactly this: the PA Foods sheet specifies a "pin-out test on a dummy" to confirm the paste rolls smooth with no cracking.

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Covering a cake

The Zeelandia Roll Dekor sheet gives the working method in one line: soften by kneading, apply at 21–23°C, and roll out to 3 mm to cover the tops and sides of cakes and roulades. In practice 3–4 mm is the normal covering thickness.

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1. Prepare the cake. Crumb-coat with buttercream, or apply a thin marzipan under-layer, or brush with jam / apricot glaze — the sugarpaste needs something to stick to.
2. Knead the paste at 21–23°C until smooth and plastic; dust the bench with icing sugar (not flour).
3. Roll to 3–4 mm with even pressure.
4. Lift and drape, then smooth the top first, then the sides, working the air out — and work quickly, because the longer the surface is exposed the more it dries.
5. Trim the base.

The full sequence and the room conditions are in the sugarpaste-covering formula card below.

Why marzipan often goes under the fondant

On a rich or fruit cake, a thin marzipan layer under the sugarpaste does two jobs: it smooths the surface for a flawless finish, and it blocks fruit oils and colour from migrating up and staining the white icing. Let the marzipan firm for a day before icing over it.

Allergen: Any finished product that contains a marzipan under-layer must declare tree nuts (almonds) as an allergen under EU Regulation 1169/2011 Annex II, even though the marzipan is hidden beneath the fondant. This is a common mislabelling failure point — "almond" must appear in the allergen declaration on menus, counter cards and pre-packaged labels.

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Gum, flower & modelling pastes — sugarpaste, firmed up

When you need a paste that holds fine detail, rolls translucently thin, or dries hard enough to stand up, you stiffen sugarpaste by working in more gum:

• Modelling / gum paste: knead approximately 1–2 teaspoons of CMC (E466) into every 450 g of sugarpaste (indicative guide; follow product-manufacturer dosage instructions — this specific quantity is from industry practice sources of medium reliability ). CMC thickens immediately and can be used the same day; gum tragacanth (E413) does the same job but needs about 24 hours to develop.
• Flower / petal paste (US: gum paste) can be rolled much thinner than sugarpaste while keeping its strength — it is the medium for sugar flowers, petals and butterflies. The catalogue White Flower Paste is a ready-made example.
• Pastillage is sugar plus gum with no fat — it dries rock-hard and is used for structural pieces and plaques, but it is brittle and not for eating.

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For showpieces that must survive humidity, isomalt is the more robust sugar. It is a polyol (sugar alcohol) that is far less hygroscopic than sucrose, so it stays clear and crisp where ordinary sugar would weep. (Isomalt sugar-work belongs to A6-sugar-work-techniques; the catalogue stocks BENEO Isomalt ST-PF.)

Allergen: Any food containing polyols (including isomalt) at a level exceeding 10% in the finished product must carry the statement "excessive consumption may produce laxative effects" under EU Regulation 1169/2011 Annex III. Apply this label warning to any edible product — fillings, coatings, confectionery — where isomalt constitutes >10% of the final food weight.

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Colouring — gel and paste, not liquid

The recurring colouring mistake is reaching for a liquid colour: liquid adds water, and water makes sugarpaste sticky and soft and ruins poured-fondant set. For pastes, use gel or paste colours, which deliver intense colour with very little added water. The catalogue gel colour is built on a glucose-syrup and glycerine base (not water) precisely so it colours without softening. Powders and dusts add no water at all and are for dusting, airbrushing and deep dry colour. The decision grid is in the colour-types table below.

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Three things about colour are not optional:

1. There are legal maximum doses. Food colours have EU maximum use levels (Regulation 1129/2011). The catalogue gel (Brilliant Blue E133) states a maximum recommended dosage of 21.0 g of gel product per kg of finished food for decorations, coatings and fillings (and 13.0 g/kg for other confectionery). This is the supplier's gel-product dose, not the EU pure-dye limit; Reg 1129/2011 expresses limits as mg/kg of pure colorant, and the E133 concentration in the gel is not stated — verify compliance against Reg 1333/2008 Annex II for the applicable food category before advising on dosage. Deep, saturated shades can run into that ceiling — and into a softened paste — long before you reach the colour you wanted.
2. The "Southampton Six" carry a warning. Six colours — E102, E104, E110, E122, E124, E129 — must, since 2010 under Regulation 1333/2008, carry the label "may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children". This is not theoretical: the catalogue PA Foods red sugarpaste is coloured with E124 + E129 and its own spec carries exactly that warning. Brilliant Blue (E133) is not on that list, so it needs no warning.
3. Titanium dioxide (E171) — EU ban; UK status differs. The classic white pigment in white sugarpaste and cake decorations, E171, was banned as a food additive in the EU from 7 February 2022 (Regulation 2022/63, with a transition to 7 August 2022). However, the UK FSA had not banned E171 as of 2025 — it remained permitted in Great Britain under retained law while the FSA completed its own review. Doric is a UK manufacturer; UK-market products may legitimately still contain E171, whereas EU-destined products must not. The catalogue Doric sugarpaste spec dates from 2017/2018 and still lists titanium dioxide — confirm current formulation and the destination market before using or relabelling.

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Humidity, sweating and colour bleed — the "why it matters"

Every one of these media is hygroscopic: sugar pulls water out of the air. That single fact explains the most common finished-cake complaints, and it is why a controlled environment matters more than skill on a humid day.

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• Sweating is condensation. Take a chilled or refrigerated fondant cake into a warm, humid room and water condenses on the cold surface; because the sugar is hygroscopic, the surface goes sticky and the gloss turns to "sweat". The fix is rarely the paste — it is the handling: decorate at roughly 21–24°C (70–75°F) and 50–60% relative humidity, and let chilled cakes come back to room temperature inside a sealed box before unwrapping.
• Colour bleed happens when a dyed piece is still moist as another colour touches it; moisture carries the dye across the join. Let coloured pastes skin/dry before assembly, and use low-water gel/paste colours.
• Cracking and "elephant skin" (dry wrinkles at the edges) are the paste drying out during handling — work quickly, keep paste covered, rely on the glycerine humectant, and rub a little vegetable fat (not cornflour) over a forming wrinkle.

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The full fault table — including dull/grainy poured fondant and disappearing icing-sugar dust — is below.

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Finishing & dusting — when icing sugar disappears

A practical trap at the end of the job: ordinary icing sugar is sucrose (the catalogue Kent Icing Sugar CP is ~99.2% sugars, finely ground to a mean ~19–26 µm with a tricalcium-phosphate anti-caking agent). Dust it over a moist, refrigerated or sweating dessert and it simply dissolves and disappears.

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For chilled, frozen-then-thawed, or wrapped products use a non-melting dusting sugar. The catalogue Macphie Sweet Snow is dextrose-based with a fat coating, engineered so it will not dissolve in high humidity, after freeze–thaw, or under chilled/wrapped storage. It is the difference between a clean white finish at service and a wet, patchy one (see the dusting-sugars comparison table below).

Regulatory note: (1) The Sweet Snow ingredient list includes partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (palm kernel); partially hydrogenated oils are a source of industrial trans fats — verify EU Regulation 2019/649 compliance (max 2 g industrial trans fat per 100 g total fat) with Macphie before advising on use. (2) The spec notes gluten, soy and milk are handled on the production site; cross-contact allergens should be declared to customers with coeliac disease, soy allergy or milk allergy.

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How to choose — quick frameworks

By job:

• Glaze with a shine (éclairs, fancies, doughnuts) → poured fondant (Zeelandia Fondant Ready, Arctos, Vortumnus); warm to 40–48°C, never over 50°C.
• Cover a cake smoothly → rolled sugarpaste; roll to 3–4 mm over a buttercream/marzipan/jam base.
• Almond flavour, or a smoothing/blocking under-layer → marzipan / almond paste.
• Flowers, fine models, standing pieces → flower/gum paste, or sugarpaste + CMC/tragacanth; pastillage or isomalt for structures.

By dietary/label constraint:

• Vegan / dairy-free → most sugarpastes and poured fondants are plant-based (e.g. Vortumnus vegan, Doric vegan), but marzipan is a tree-nut product and many sugarpastes carry may-contain milk/soy. Always confirm on the current spec.
• Coeliac → check carefully: Roll Dekor contains WHEAT starch, and Doric is declared "not suitable for coeliacs" despite having no gluten ingredient, because gluten is handled on site. "No gluten ingredient" is not the same as gluten-free.
• Children's product → avoid the Southampton-Six colours to skip the attention warning; avoid any product still formulated with E171.

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Catalogue pick list

Marzipan & almond: Marzipan 50% (Zeelandia — request correct datasheet); Almond Paste (Zeelandia); Persipan Paste (Komplet); Ground Almonds (Quality Food Corporation, spec-confirmed; also Global Grains); Blanched Almond Flour (Polmarkus).

Poured / cream fondant (glazing): Zeelandia Fondant Ready (spec); Vortumnus Sugar Glaze water pomade (spec); Arctos Ultra White Fondant and Arctos Fondant 30 (spec); Helios Water Fondant.

Rolled sugarpaste (covering): Zeelandia Roll Dekor Soft (spec); PA Foods Ready-to-Roll (spec — note azo-colour warning on the red); Doric Ready-to-Roll (spec — note older E171); White Wrap Ice (CSM) as a cover-icing alternative.

Gum / flower paste & structures: White Flower Paste (Sweet Decor); add CMC/gum tragacanth to sugarpaste for modelling; BENEO Isomalt ST-PF (Hortimex) for humidity-resistant showpieces.

Base ingredients, colour & finish: Icing Sugar CP (Kent, spec) and Icing Sugar 10 kg; Vegetable Glycerine E422 (Kilo, spec — humectant); Food Colour gels (Food Colours, spec) and Spectral Paste (Culpitt); Macphie Sweet Snow non-melting dusting powder (spec).

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Coverage notes (transparency)

Strong (spec-sheet confirmed): composition, dry matter, energy, allergen and handling data for Zeelandia Roll Dekor, PA Foods (red) and Doric sugarpastes; Vortumnus, Zeelandia and Arctos poured fondants; Kent icing sugar; Quality Food Corp ground almonds; Kilo glycerine; BENEO isomalt; Macphie Sweet Snow; the Food Colours gel (incl. its stated max dosage). The almond aflatoxin limits cross-check exactly against EU 2023/915.

Medium (independent literature, cross-checked): the sugarpaste backbone (sugar/glucose + humectant + fat + gum) and the 3–4 mm covering thickness; the CMC/tragacanth modelling-paste conversion dosage (medium-reliability craft sources, flagged indicative); the humidity/sweating mechanics and the 21–24°C / 50–60% RH decorating environment — BAKERpedia, ASB and craft-decorating sources.

Medium (reference, cross-checked ≥2 sources): marzipan almond:sugar ratios (50:50 standard minimum / 70:30 Lübeck / 90:10 Edelmarzipan / ≥65% Rohmasse) and the Lübeca M0 figures (≥27% almond oil, ≤17% moisture) — confirmed across Lübeca, Niederegger and trade references; the previously-claimed "~14% almond-oil minimum" was unsupported and has been removed. The poured-fondant crystallisation suite (~20 µm crystals; sucrose 64–71% / glucose 9–16% / water ~20%; cook ~118°C; cool 45–50°C in ~5 mm; beat 20–30 min) is confirmed against BAKERpedia + FoodCrumbles (BAKERpedia gives the 45–50°C cooling target; some confectionery sources cool further, to ~38–43°C, for finer crystals).

Reported (single trade reference): persipan composition (≈40:60 kernels:sugar; ~0.5% starch for iodine ID); confirm with your supplier before relying on it.

Reference/regulatory (verified): aflatoxin 8/10 ppb = ready-to-eat almond limit, 12/15 ppb = almonds for sorting, 2/4 ppb = groundnuts not almonds (EU 2023/915); Southampton-Six six colours and the children's-attention warning (Reg 1333/2008); E171 ban dates 7 Feb / 7 Aug 2022 (Reg 2022/63); decorating environment 21–24°C (70–75°F), 50–60% RH (°C↔°F conversion checked).

Single-source (NOT cross-checked — supplier's own spec sheet): every per-product number (dry matter/extract, energy, fat, carbohydrate, pH, particle size, dosage, allergen list) for the fourteen catalogue products. The catalogue "Marzipan 50%" spec PDF is mis-attached (a poppy-seed-filling sheet) — request the correct datasheet. Colour maximum-use level (21 g/kg) is the supplier's gel-product dose, NOT the EU pure-dye limit — verify against Regulation 1333/2008 Annex II / 1129/2011.

Regulatory (verify currency before labelling): E171 ban (Reg 2022/63); Southampton-Six warning (Reg 1333/2008); aflatoxin limits (Reg 2023/915); allergen labelling (Reg 1169/2011).

No first-party data: Almond Paste, Persipan, Blanched Almond Flour, White Flower Paste, Helios Water Fondant, Icing Sugar 10 kg, White Wrap Ice, Culpitt Spectral Paste — no spec sheets; confirm composition and allergens with suppliers.