It all began when I got the ambitious idea to make my son's cake for his second birthday party in October. I found this adorable Elmo cake on the net and decided that there was no reason for me to shell out another $80 for a fancy fondant cake like I did for the last party, by golly...I'm making it myself! Ambitious, no?
Ambitious, and quite the undertaking. The cake I found it a three tiered masterpiece, covered in...DUM DUM DAAAAAAHHHHHH...fondant.
This is what I knew about fondant as of last week:
1. My mom, the cake decorator, wouldn't touch the stuff. She's old school, royal icing all the way!
2. Fondant tastes funny
3. Fondant instantly makes a cake more expensive
4. Fondant looks AMAZING on all those Food Network Cake Challenge Shows...NO WAY I can pull that off at home.
Well, I decided if I'm going to make my son's cake, I needed practice. We were planning on hosting my mother in law's birthday celebration at our house on Sunday anyways, so why not just start my practice with that! I decided that if the fondant failed, I'd just rip it of and ice it in butter cream. No harm, no foul.
I did a lot of research on the net in the week leading up to the party and grabbed a few basic fondant items from the local craft store. I purchased a box of Wilton's fondant, a large fondant rolling pin, some circle cutters, and a fondant smoother and I was ready to go.
I chose to do a simple white cake from my big, red, Betty Crocker's Cookbook. I went with the "Silver White Cake".
2 1/2 Cups Cake Flour
1 2/3 Cups Sugar
2/3 Cups Shortening
1 1/4 Cups Milk
3 1/2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 Teaspoon Vanilla or Almond Extract (When given the choice, I ALWAYS use Almond)
5 Large Egg Whites
My preference for almond extract over vanilla goes back to my childhood. My grandmother and my mother always used the same Christmas cookie recipe with one difference, Mom used vanilla extract, Grandma used almond. I loved both cookies...but there was always something about Grandma's that had me revisiting that cookie plate at Christmas. Once I was of the age where making Christmas cookies became important to me, I asked my grandma if she did something different than my mom...her answer, almond extract. From that day on, I was an almond extract convert!
Friday night rolled around, my son is in bed, time to bake the cakes! I gathered up my ingredients and got to work.
I preheated the oven to 350 degrees and greased up a couple 8 inch round cake pans. I also lined the bottoms of the pans with some parchment paper, which makes getting the cakes out of the pans SUPER easy!
I mixed all the ingredients except the egg whites in my stand mixer on low for about 30 seconds (scraping bowl), then on high speed for another 2 minutes (again, scraping bowl).Then I beat in the egg whites, on high, for an additional 2 minutes before pouring into my pans.
I baked for about 25 minutes or so, until the cake sprung back when touched, and cooled for a few minutes on the rack before turning the cakes out to cool completely.
Once cooled, I wrapped the cakes in plastic wrap and threw them into the freezer for the night.
Saturday evening, once the little guy was in bed, it was time to get this cake together! I started by making my vanilla butter cream. I found this recipe on the Food Network's website, and I've found that making a batch and a half usually works pretty well.
Don't you just love my messy kitchen!?
Now it was time to assemble my masterpiece! I leveled off my cakes and gave them a healthy layer of butter cream between the cake layers and slapped on a coat on top of everything.
This is when I ripped open my package of fondant and went to work. I read that fondant will take on some of the flavor of the butter cream, but flavoring the fondant itself is also a good idea. If you are going to flavor fondant (and you want to keep it white), you'll want to use a clear flavoring. Wilton does make a clear vanilla extract, but I still had some almond extract on hand, so I poked a hole into my fondant, poured a little in and kneaded it like it was dough for a while...a long while. If I keep this up I'm gonna have some nice pipes!
Once my fondant was flavored, and kneaded enough to be rolled, I dusted my rolling surface with some powdered sugar and got to rolling. I needed to get the fondant rolled out to an 18 inch diameter. Once we were all rolled out, it was the moment of truth...getting this stuff on my cake.
I managed to get it onto the cake without tearing it...but I don't think I cut off the excess quickly enough, as I wound up with this:
I was a little disappointed, but I planned on decorating the cake with more fondant cut outs, so I figured I'd just cover up all the creases!
The little instruction booklet that came with the fondant said that I should wait 2-3 hours before I started decorating the cake....crap! It was already almost 9:00PM and I wanted to get to bed sometime before midnight. So, I started on the next part of my project and figured that would just need to be good enough!
In the event that my cake bombed, I wanted to have some backup...my backup came in the form of cupcakes...from a mix. In my defense, I did whip up a nice batch of cream cheese frosting (Thanks again Heather from SprinkleBakes) and tinted it pink, my mother in law's favorite color!
My kitchen was a freakin' mess!
Now it was time to decorate the cake! I tinted the fondant pink with some decorator's gel color and donned some gloves to knead in the color. I was really impressed by how well the color worked into the fondant (just like on TV)!
I used my circle cutters to cut out some decorations and applied the cut outs to the cake by brushing the back of the cut outs with water. This is where I employed some camouflage and covered up the creases in the white fondant!
I planned on decorating the cupcakes the next day and it was after 10:00PM, so I needed a break! I had an "only in Wisconsin" moment and washed down some cake scraps and butter cream with a beer. Don't turn up your nose...it was DELICIOUS!
The next day (after enjoying a blissful 20 minutes of extra sleep while my husband fed Fox his breakfast), I put everything together! Drum roll Please.....
Not only did it look great...it tasted great too! The almond extract reminded me of my Grandma's Christmas cookies and the birthday girl was tickled...wait for it...PINK! The other party guests loved the cake (and cupcakes), and there was only one piece left once the party ended!!
Final Verdict: I'm no longer afraid of fondant!! I know what I need to do next time to clean up some of my boo-boos. First, I will be sure to roll the fondant a little thinner, and second, I need to trim the fondant as soon as I put it on the cake to avoid creasing.
I plan to make another cake in a few weeks to hone my chops...but I will bring about another bread posting soon!
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