How To Make Flexible Fondant Smoothers

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This tutorial will show you how easy it is to make flexible fondant smoothers at home, so you can get a perfectly smooth fondant finish on your cakes. Includes a handy printable template!

If there’s one cake decorating tool that has surprised me with its usefulness over the years, it has to be flexible fondant smoother.

Sure, they smooth fondant on a cake like they’re supposed to, but they’re also really useful for other things, like smoothing fondant on cookies, transferring fondant decorations without damaging them, and scooping up sprinkles.

If you’re unfamiliar with using flexible fondant smoothers, they are thin pieces of plastic with rounded corners, and their main purpose is smoothing fondant onto a cake. Their flexibility means they can conform to the shape of a cake, and their thinness means you can feel any lumps and bumps, and smooth them out.

Along with a regular fondant smoother, they’re also one of the keys to getting super sharp top edges when you wrap a cake with fondant, because they make it easier to smooth out the joins and make them invisible.

They’re also great for smoothing fondant on carved cakes, because they bend to the shape, and you can also use them to ganache carved cakes as well.

You can, of course, buy ready-made flexible smoothers. But they’re often expensive, and considering that I regularly throw out a smoother or two by accident while cleaning up after a cake, it’s cheaper to make my own and if I make a bunch at a time then I always have plenty of them on hand.

While my main flexi smoothers are approximately the size and shape of my palm, I also like to have some itty bitty acetate ones, around the size of two fingers. These are so useful for carved cakes, as they allow you to smooth over various shapes and into small spaces without gouging out the fondant. They’re also perfect for decorating sugar cookies with fondant.

(Side note: I haven’t been able to decide if that picture should be captioned “Gimme all your money!” or “Turn your head and cough”.)

Plastic for Flexible Fondant Smoothers

I use two thicknesses of plastic for my smoothers. The first, and thickest, is stencil/template plastic from a craft shop, you’ll usually find it in with the sewing supplies.

The thickness is approximately 1mm, so they bend slightly but not too much. If you read closely on the packaging for the template plastic in the picture below, it says “textured surface”, this means it’s non-slip, but it is still smooth (which is important, if you want smooth fondant, which is the whole reason we’re making these, right?!) 

The other plastic I use is acetate, which you can buy from craft supply stores or cake suppliers who sell acetate for chocolate making. It’s best to buy it as a sheet, not a roll, as it’s hard to get those to flatten out completely, and that means your acetate could be bent and possibly gouge bits out of your fondant.

Instead of acetate, you can also cut up a thin L-shaped, plastic filing folder, like that blue one at the top of the picture.

If you can, I recommend getting plastic that is coloured. I don’t know how many times I have misplaced clear fondant smoothers, those things are practically invisible when you’re mid-fondanting and grasping around for a smoother.

I use the thicker plastic smoothers when making sharp edges on my cakes, and the thinner acetate ones for final buffing of the fondant once it’s mostly smooth, and for sculpted cakes.

Supplies

Here’s what you’ll need to make your flexible fondant smoothers:

• Your plastic of choice
• Self-healing cutting mat
• Craft knife
• Metal ruler
• Marker pen / Sharpie
• Scissors
• Isopropyl alcohol or cake decorator’s alcohol

Oh, and you’ll need to have downloaded and printed out the template, of course…

How to Make Flexible Fondant Smoothers

Start by preparing your template. For best results, print it out as “A4 borderless” onto a sheet of thin card. You can also use regular printer paper, but card will make it easier to draw around.

I’ve given two slightly different sizes of templates for the regular and mini smoothers, you can see which of them is closest in size to fit your hand (or scale them up or down if necessary).

For cutting out both the template and the smoothers, you’ll get the results by using a ruler and craft knife to cut the straight sides, and then use small scissors to round off the corners.

Line the template up with a corner of the plastic, and draw around it.

And just like the template, cut out the straight sides with the craft knife…

And round off the edges with the scissors.

Then use a splash of isopropyl alcohol on a paper towel to remove any remaining lines of marker. Even permanent marker has a habit of rubbing off the plastic, so it’s better to remove it now.

Aaaand, that’s it. Repeat those steps for as many flexible fondant smoothers as you want. The process is the same for the thicker template plastic, just make sure you run your finger around the edges of those, as sometimes the plastic doesn’t cut as smoothly as the acetate. You don’t want ragged edges ruining the fondant you’re trying to perfect.

After each use, it’s a good idea to wash the smoothers in some soapy water to remove any bits of fondant or whatever it is that you use on your fondant to stop it from sticking to your bench. Then give them a rinse and leave ’em to dry, ready for next time.

Happy smoothing!

Natalie
xx

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How to Colour Ganache – learn how to colour white chocolate ganache, make black chocolate ganache, make a coloured ganache drip, and more!
How to Make Edible Sand – perfect for decorating sea-themed cakes and cookies.
How to Make Stamped Fondant Cookies – learn how to use fondant stamps to make easy yet impressive decorated cookies.
All Cake Decorating Tutorials – see all of my cake decorating tutorials.