Cake-A-Month - December - Post 4

Okay, onto the part that I was dreading excited about trying very very nervous about: the fondant! I had made my own marshmallow fondant for my sons 1st birthday cake but I really didn't know what I was doing at the time. The recipe said to mix icing sugar (powdered sugar to those in the states) through the melted marshmallows until it came together at the right dough-like texture for fondant. But I'd never worked with fondant before so I had no idea what the right texture was, so I just made a guess and it worked out perfectly fine for the time since I was only using it to sculpt bugs but I don't think that method would work very well if I were trying to cover a cake in fondant so I decided this time around to buy some of the pre-made stuff to get a feel for how it's supposed to feel to work with (not Wilton brand though! I may be new at this but I know better than to buy Wilton's pre-made fondant lol!).

My very first attempt at cake decorating. A bug themed cake for my sons 1st birthday.

 After reading up a bit on it I decided to use the Satin Ice brand. It's taste is meant to be quite nice and although it's supposedly more difficult to work with especially compared to Wilton I figured I may as well use the real stuff rather than wasting my time and money on Wilton fondant. It cost a small fortune though, it wasn't readily available in any of the nearby stores here in Canberra so I had to buy it online. Cost me $25 including postage :O
It was terrible weather when I was working with the fondant, it was hot and muggy and very very humid. Needless to say I had several problems. First I think I was working with the fondant too much, I kept rolling it out using powdered sugar to keep it from sticking and to help it not be so soft and sticky (I now know that powdered sugar then makes it very dry and promotes cracking), but then it would get too dry and I'd use shortening, only to have it get too soft in the warm weather. I'd roll it out but it would tear and I'd roll it back into a ball to roll out again. Long story short, I should have just left it alone instead of constantly adding this, then adding that to fix the problem this caused...
I also didn't think I would have enough fondant. The 2 pound tub I bought was supposed to be enough to cover a 4" high 10" wide cake, my cake was 9" and about 3.5" high so I figured it would be enough but when rolling it out I ended up having to roll it really thin to have enough to cover the cake. The thinner the fondant the more prone to tearing and more difficult to work with so I wasn't off to a great start.
Finally after a lot of swearing and help from my helpful hubby I got a nice large circle of fondant about 20" across, enough to cover the cake with an inch spare either side. I used my rolling pin lift it and cover it over the cake and quickly smoothed down the top and tops of the sides. This is where the second lot of trouble started.

The fondant tore. In several places actually. It was just too heavy and thin and couldn't cope with the weight and ripped. Then all these miniscule cracks started appearing at the top edge in the fondant. I quickly worked on smoothing and attaching the fondant to the rest of the cake, quickly cut away the excess and tried to work out how to repair the tears. I'd read about a lot of people having luck with using shortening to fix the cracks so I started rubbing shortening into the miniscule cracks to soften the fondant up enough to close the cracks. Luckily it worked pretty well. Then my husband gave me a hand and discovered a way to fix the large tears. He would get a bit of fondant, soften it up with shortening and sorta 'patch' it over the whole then use the shortening to smear the edges to make it look seamless. It actually worked pretty well and we managed to repair all the cracks. By this point the fondant was getting too soft from the humidity so we decided to put it away in the fridge for a few hours to harden it up.

A few hours later we brought the cake out and used shortening to finish smoothing the miniscule cracks and edges of the patch-jobs and used the Wilton fondant smoothing paddle to finish the smoothing job. Despite all the problems I had, the end result was actually pretty good and I was very proud of my our work.

Despite the problems I had I reckon it looks pretty damn sexy!!

 I decided to leave the cake sitting out overnight under a fan to help dry it out because even after being in the fridge the fondant was still pretty soft and...squidgy :/

The next morning I attached the snowflakes with dabs of royal icing and took it to the in-laws for Christmas Eve dinner :)

Pretty happy with the results!

Look at all those pretty layers!