If Tammie Coe could sum up fondant in one word, it would be "persnickety."

"I like the way fondant can be. It has a personality," says Coe. "It depends on the weather. When it's raining, it can be very difficult. In the wintertime, it's very easy to work with. It's my partner in crime."

In her bakeshop, bags of striped colored fondant await draping over her filled and frosted cakes. Dummy cakes line shelves along the walls in all sorts of forms. Sculpted designs are as simple as dainty little die-cut shapes and as extravagant as the elegant, textured and multi-tiered masterpieces we've all seen on TV and in magazines.

Since starting her company in 2002, she's taken requests for a light-up R2D2 cake, a model of a vespa, a troll crossing a bridge, plenty of detailed animals and vegetables, and much more.

"All the excitement's in a fun cake we've never done," she says.

To Coe, the ideal fondant decoration is thin with no air bubbles. It has a better flavor than what most people know. She uses a type of fondant with the addition of white chocolate that tastes like a white tootsie roll as her medium of choice. Read on for her tips on how to work with fondant, including a demonstration on how to smooth it over cookies.