My First Fondant Cake

So this isn't sewing related but for those creatively inclined, one outlet is not always enough.  I'm a big fan of homemade birthday cakes over store bought, simply because the love is in them. I remember my sons and their father making me a birthday cake, it was lopsided and slightly gooey in the middle, and they stopped short of icing it telling me that I'd have to tackle that but it was still such a nice surprise. It may have been my favourite cake ever.

At any rate, I decided for son number 3 I would attempt a fondant covered cake for the first time, since traditional frosting was never my forte and I always had to tackle cakes like craft projects  in order for them to turn out.

After much anxiety and a whole lot of recipe searches I decided on marshmallow fondant because several people claimed it was easier to work with. The recipes I found all used a microwave to melt the marshmallows. I lacked a glass bowl large enough so I used a metal bowl on top of a large pot of boiling water as a makeshift double boiler.

I started with greasing the counter with vegtable shortening, poured 4 cups of icing sugar onto that and made a well in the centre.

I added 4 Tbsp water to the bowl (or double boiler) and 8 cups of mini marshmallows, stirred these fairly constantly until they were melted and poured the mixture into the well.

(I tinted this one while the marshmallows were melting, I did two others white and tinted them  after removing them from the fridge in preparation for rolling)

Grease your hands very very well and slowly start folding the powdered sugar over the marshmallow (careful it is pretty warm and very sticky) and continue this way until you can knead it, adding more icing sugar if sticky or a bit of water if it becomes dry.  When it is well mixed greas the outisde of the fondant ball or log with shortening and wrap it tightly in saran wrap, then place in  plastic container or baggie over night.

The next day I made all the cakes. I used cake mixes and made them more dense by adding an extra egg (4 total per cake mix) adding a pudding mix and reducing the liquid (recipe called for 1 1/4 cups water or milk, I used about 3/4 cups milk)

Next  I cut the cakes flat and in half (with bread knife) and stacked them with  a buttercream frosting between the layers (I used this recipe at wilton.com )

 and iced the sides and top with a thin layer, then placed them in the fridge while I got going with the fondant.

I put the fondant in the microwave for 10 seconds at a time to make it soft enough to knead, coated the counter with  icing sugar again and rolled it out to between 1/8 - 1/4" ( I'm no expert but it was pretty basic to knead and roll) there are plenty of youtube videos and blogs out there who can explain it better than I can. I did darken the green a bit aswell by adding a few drops of food colouring while kneading (a little messy but washed off my hands and counter easily)

I enlisted a second set of hands to just lift the sheet of fondant and place it over the cake, rather than rolling and unrolling it on the rolling pin. Shaped it and worked it around the cake until it fit nicely with no wrinkles, cut it around the bottom and put it aside to repeat with tier #2. There was plenty of green left over so I took about 1/2 the next batch and tinted it blue for the 'sky'. then two tiny little balls to tink pink and yellow for the flowers.

Next I used a little left over storebought chocolate icing for the tree trunks, then mixed a generous tablespoon of it with a tablespoon of the buttercream frosting to make the dirt pile for gopher, and tinted the rest green to get the nice dark green leaves without using all of my food colouring.

Next step was to print out the characters. In this case  the hundred acre woods theme meant pooh and friends but this background could quite easily work for just about any animal or character group. We looked around for little figurines but there was nothing local  until we found the bath toys. These were obviously too big for the landscape but made nice toppers for the cake. The characters were then glued to an old notebook backing (because I couldn't find my cardstock paper to print on) and the attached to toothpicks to be arranged around the cake.

Then on top we had the three tub squirter toys we'd found, aswell as a little singing/light up banner that we hot glued to two wedding cake pillars held in place by dowels.

The overall look was  pretty impressive for someone with minimal cake decorating skills. I've never used the store bought fondant so I can't compare the two but from this experience I would definitely say that marshmallow fondant is a good place to start if you find the idea of fondant intimidating. I had no problems with it tearing , since it was light enough and the marshmallow didn't need to be rolled extremely thin. I suspect for lots of fondant detailing, ribbons, stripes etc, the traditional fondant may be more appropriate but in this case...it worked for us.