The Air bubbles in fondant icing?

Can i use air drying clay to make moulds?

• i want to make a mold of to make body parts. if it ok to use it on a old barbie doll to make the molds. i also need to use the molds for fondant icing

• Answer:

  There are various materials you could use to make molds for fondant, even body parts from Barbie dolls. Two-part silicone putties would be best (and no allergic reaction**) and quickest, but fairly expensive for an entire Barbie doll. If you're making 3D molds though, they'd need to be flexible or they'd need to be 2-part molds which could be rigid. RAW (unhardened) clays could also be used like polymer clays, air-dry clays, and modeling-plasticine clays, but only air-dry clays of those 3 would be "food safe". Air-dry clays will tend to start drying out fairly quickly though, and may not be stiff enough for pressing in the fondant unless you use some kind of support behind the soft clay (a "mother mold," for example). The other 2 clays would be stiffer while raw. Polymer clay can be baked to harden at any time, and also could be used for "press molds" or for 2 sided-molds. It should be safe enough for short exposure to something edible once hardened. Air-dry clays can also be hardened but they will shrink to some extent during drying and can have less-than-entirely-smooth surfaces (both things depend on brands purchased, etc). Making good-sized molds for something like an entire Barbie isn't really easy though, and might require a lot of previous knowledge or experimentation. You can read more about making molds yourself from various materials, and most of the things above, on the Molds page of my site for more info if you're interested: http://glassattic.com/polymer/molds.htm ** Silicone is NOT he same thing as latex (though they're both sometimes called "rubbers") so there would be no allergy problems when a person who's allergic to latex uses a silicone product. ....And btw, the mineral "silicon" isn't the same thing as one of the compounds made from it--silicone (think sand and computer chips for the first one, and fake boobs for the second one).