Fondant First Try

My mom's birthday dinner was last night and I decided that instead of buying a cake, I'd make it myself. I have been missing out on baking since I started my stupid diet, so I got really excited and decided to try making a fondant cake. I headed out to Michael's and parked myself in the Wilton cake aisle for a good while, figuring the simplest plan was the best for my first try.

Everyone in my family loves chocolate cake, so I started with the cake. I added almond extract to give it a little hint of almond flavor.


I bought two 8 inch cake rounds at the craft store and I'm glad I did. They were the perfect size for a cute birthday cake and it looked nice and tall, rather than short and squat.


While the cake was baking, I decided to make the buttercream frosting, which adds great flavor (since most people don't like to actually eat fondant) and adheres the fondant to the cake.


My basic recipe for buttercream frosting is as follows:

1 stick of butter
1/2 cup of shortening
1/2 tbsp of vanilla extract
1 box of powdered sugar (1 lb)
1-4 tbsp of cold milk

Cream butter and shortening together (some people go all butter, it's up to you), then add the vanilla. Once that is smooth, add the powdered sugar bit by bit until it gets kind of crumbly. Then you can add the tbsp. of milk and mix until you reach a desired consistency. Remember, you have to spread it over a cake, so make sure it's not too thick.

Once the cake was cooled, I sliced off the rounded tops and mounted the layers onto a cardboard round (also bought at Michael's). I used my Martha Stewart cake decorating stand, which swivels around so you can stay put and smooth the frosting easily. Excellent wedding gift! I filled the middle of the cake with strawberry jam.


Once it was frosted, I put it in the fridge so the frosting would set up a bit and the cake wouldn't be too soft. If the cake is too soft and squishy, the fondant doesn't go on so nice.


That's when I started making the box. I wanted the whole thing to be part of our gift to her, so I got a simple cake box for less than $2 and used my stamps and craft paper to create something sweet.


I didn't make the fondant myself. I bought the ready made stuff. A box of white and a box of neon orange/pink/yellow/purple decorator fondant. Fondant is tough to work with because you gotta act fast. I smoothed it over the cake in a jiffy, but it did slightly tear on the backside. I made a rather large orange band to go around the bottom as a cover-up. I didn't have many cute cutter shapes for decoration, and a lot of the sample cake designs on the boxes of fondant looked a bit too busy for me, so I settled on a hummingbird and hibiscus design of my own. After I sketched the design for them on paper, I cut them out and laid each one over rolled out fondant. I used an exacto knife to cut them out of the fondant and pasted them to the cake with water. Once they had set and were not so soft, I painted them using food coloring paste (not liquid food coloring, which doesn't work well on fondant). This is the set I got on sale at Williams Sonoma in December:


I used a food coloring pen (Wilton's Food Writer) to write "Happy Birthday Mom" on a round of fondant that I stuck on the cake, since my icing writing skills are minimal. Then I put little white dots of the leftover buttercream on the top and she was complete!


Not too shabby for a first try, but I will definitely do some things differently the next time.

Thing that helped most? Going to YouTube and finding as many videos as I could about how to properly roll and adhere the fondant to the cake. All things are possible with Google and YouTube. I swear.