Teaching a fondant class... in just one hour!

Christmas cake plaques?  Cut out a nice shaped plaque with a cutter and then get them to colour and cut out small christmas theme shapes (if you have those sort of cutters).  You could either cut and dry the plaques in advance or provide them with stiff card to take them home on and let them do it themselves in the class.  They could experiment with lustre dust or texturing the fondant as well, and even piping Merry Christmas if they're game.  Otherwise unless you're planning to sculpt some sort of figure or flower you really need something to put the fondant on so you could decorate cupcakes or biscuits - colouring, texturing and cutting out rounds and smaller shapes to embellish. HTH

Teach them to colour some fondant, cover a cupcake with a circle of fondant, and add a couple of cutout blossoms, or the roses where you cut three circles and roll them together - what are those called again? Or ribbon roses.

I'd have the cupcakes already with smooth buttercream or ganache on them.

You might start with the basics. . .unless everyone in the class has already used fondant.  Teach them to make MMF and then how to cover a small round cake.  You might even have time to show how to put a simple border and a flower cut out or two on it.  Some people seem to have a difficult time making MMF, so starting there might be the best place.   

I would suggest taking cupcakes and showing them how to cover them with fondant and then a small cut out for a decoration. In  the two hour class I took we covered two small cakes, but it was not an easy task. We brought in the cakes already covered with buttercream, then we had to soften the fondant and roll it, and then we went ahead and covered the cakes. The decorations had been previously made and we pasted them with icing. PM me to rgreen@csusm.edu if you want more information.