Advice On Making A Fondant Cake

Last summer I went to my aunt’s for a week. One of the days she gave a cake decorating class and she let me join in. I learned how to make marshmallow fondant (which is WAY better than the store bought kind!) and a variety of gumpaste/fondant flowers such as roses, mums, peace lilies, fantasy flowers and daisies. When I got back from my trip, I bought a Wilton cake decorating set and my friend and I made our other friend a birthday cake. It took us 7 hours to do everything. So this year, we were determined to make it as easy as possible so we planned. If you ever make a giant cake with fondant, here’s how I would do it now after learning from my mistakes…

1.)            Spread it out over the course of a few days- Don’t overwhelm yourself.  7 hours the first time seemed like forever and it was exhausting! This time we decided we would make the fondant and bake the cake the night before we decorated so that the cake could cool completely and we wouldn't have to wait for it. If you are going to make homemade gumpaste or use a mix, I would suggest making that either the same night as the fondant or doing it the night before the fondant. The final day we used to make the frosting and ice the cake and put the fondant on.

Day 1.) make gumpaste

Day 2.) make fondant and bake cake

Day 3.) make frosting, ice and cover cake with fondant and decorate it to your heart’s content

2.)            Plan what you want to do- Yes, plans can always change like ours did, but have an idea of what you want to do beforehand and know what types of things/colors the recipient of your cake likes and be creative. I asked my friend what colors she liked and she told me pink and blue. I thought to myself, ‘How in the world am I supposed to put those two colors together?!’ I then remembered the most beautiful sunset I ever saw over Lake Michigan a couple years ago; the water was a beautiful cerulean blue and the sky was a stunning, solid coral pink- the sight was just breathtakingly beautiful! My friend loves California and the beach so we decided to turn it into a Sunset on the Beach themed cake. We sketched a little picture with the bottom tier being a cerulean blue (the ocean) that was tall enough so that we could turn the bottom edge into the bottom of the sea. The top tier would be a coral pink (the sunset). We then wanted to make some black fondant and cut out the shape of the silhouette of a small island with some pal trees and put that on the side of the top tier and make a few tropical-looking flowers out of fondant and gumpaste to further decorate the top or something.

3.)            Make sure you have EVERYTHING beforehand! - I went through my house looking for the ingredients I knew I would need to make a shopping list. I couldn't find any cake mix so I told my mom to buy some but she thought we still had some boxes in another room so she didn't buy it when we were truly out. Luckily, my friend’s mom was able to go buy us some but by then we didn't have time to bake the cake so I had to wake up really early the day we were supposed to be decorating to bake it. I also knew my family has like 2 different things of food coloring so I didn't worry about that, but when it got time to dye the fondant blue we were 100% out of blue! My sister used up all the blue the week before making play-dough. We then spent the next 20 minutes trying to find someone that had blue food coloring. Luckily my friend, Gracie, who was helping me to make the cake was able to find some at her house.

4.)            Know how the color will change with each drop of dye-  When we were adding blue dye to the fondant to make the cerulean blue, it looked like a little bit more would do the trick and the color would be perfect. We had this turquoise color but it wasn't cerulean so we added more. The dye totally skipped the cerulean color and went to a dull, gloomy shade of blue instead.  It was also hard to get the right color for the coral.

5.)            Improvise when needed- We were exhausted because it took longer to do everything than we anticipated because of all our setbacks. My mom also bought a gumpaste mix that we’d have to make on our own and we didn't want to bother with it so we improvised. We ended up just doing a blue bottom tier and a pink top tier with colorful balls of fondant all around the edges and we used a stencil to spray paint the words ‘Happy Birthday’ on the top with food coloring spray. It turned out pretty cute and she liked it but next year we are determined to make a cake that actually ends up like our original plans now that we know what we can do better.