Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Queen, King, Ace of Cakes



Jake's cousin Nick is a pretty nice guy. He has hung out with us a lot, and we're going to miss him when he moves to Colorado. However, that's not exactly the reason I decided to make a four layer fondant cake...it was mostly for selfish reasons. It's weird because I will swear up and down that I DON'T want to be a baker, and yet the only things I ever make at home (or have any desire to make) are items in the baking and pastry field. I have always wanted to decorate a cake with fondant. Not because I think it would be tasty or fun, but because I want to learn.

I confided in my friend/coworker Renee about my plans for the cake. I have never worked with fondant before, and didn't exactly want to have an epic fail the day of the hootenanny (chock full of hoot just a lil' bit of nanny) so she decided to come over and give me a hand. This all began at 7am, mind you. We spent some time at Hannaford's getting groceries so that we wouldn't have any need to leave the apartment. In addition to regular cake ingredients, I purchased what I would need to make my fondant from scratch.

We baked off two 10" round pans of homemade yellow cake. After cooling and cutting both in half (horizontally) we slathered the inside with strawberry frosting...Not just any strawberry frosting! Frosting made with the Renee's mom's homemade strawberry jelly. After that we did a quick crumb coat with regular buttercream and began to make the fondant as the cake chilled.



The fondant was pretty easy to make. It's literally 1c. shortening 1c. corn syrup 2# powdered sugar. I threw it in the kitchen aid for about 3 minutes with a dough hook, and it was done! We rolled it all out, and draped it over the cake. FAIL. The humidity caused the fondant to sweat and pull apart, in addition to leaving ugly-ass lines all over the cake.



However, because we are badass, Renee and I made fondant shapes to go around the outside of the cake to cover up the messes! I made ocean with waves, mountains, and a bear while she worked on coloring the fondant and making trees and grass.

After we molded everything to the cake (Renee had to leave), I made a rough outline of the country on the top of the cake with a little road map leading from Maine to Colorado. Originally it was supposed to mark the map with a lobster and a snowboard, but the snowboard looked more like an evil olive monster/ flute. Therefore I settled with making a Colorado-shaped state and writing "CO" on it.

I know this entry is all so interesting, but I'm sure you're thinking, "Just show me the damn pictures already!!!1!!!1!1" Okay, fine.



3 comments:

  1. Every time you make something new and awesome, it makes me wish I had more motivati...Oooo, butterfly!

    Lol. It looks like it turned out awesome though!

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  2. Wow! That is a gorgeous cake :) I didn't know fondant was that simple. How'd the cake taste?

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  3. Thanks!

    The cake tasted great! I don't usually like buttercream frosting, but I enjoyed it & everyone else was raving about it :)

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