Fondant pearls are easy, you just roll up little bits of fondant into balls, right?
Sort of, but you have to make sure that they’re all a uniform size unless you’re going for the random look.
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The way that I make fondant pearls is to use a strip mold for fondant to measure out the individually-sized pearls.
That way each one is uniform, and I can use the different sizes of molds to make specifically-sized pearls. The ones in the photo above are 8mm pearls.
After I make a strip of fondant pearls, measuring them out with the strip mold, I roll them individually to get rid of the seam.
The problem with the strip molds is that they create a seam no matter how hard you try, so this is the best way to get rid of that.
After they’re rolled, I put them into a cake pan that has a piece of upholstery foam in it.
(For an article about making colored fondant pearls that have a shine to them, click here.)
The pearls dry without flattening out too much unless they’re really large.
I’ve seen other methods of drying them where people use a container with corn starch in it so that the pearls don’t dry against a firm surface, but in my opinion that adds too much dry dust to them.
When they’re dried, which usually takes one or two days at the most depending on how firm the fondant is and how dry the air is, you can toss them with some pearl luster dust.
(For an article about colored luster dusts on fondant pearls, click here.)
Here are 100 8mm pearls, they don’t take up very much room, do they?
Here’s a chart for 8mm pearls, which is the size that I use to put around the base of my cake tiers.
I use 6mm pearls on the sides of cakes, and 10mm pearls for decoration-type pearls on mermaid cakes and that kind of thing.
The chart shows how many 8mm pearls you need to go around the base of each cake tier, approximately. Always make extra in case you need more!
| Tier size | 8mm pearls needed for a border at the base |
| 4″ | 43 |
| 5″ | 54 |
| 6″ | 64 |
| 7″ | 77 |
| 8″ | 87 |
| 9″ | 97 |
| 10″ | 107 |
| 11″ | 117 |
| 12″ | 127 |
| 13″ | 137 |
| 14″ | 147 |
| 15″ | 157 |
| 16″ | 170 |
| 18″ | 187 |
This video shows how I make the fondant pearls and the way that I dry them:
