Homemade Fondant & My Cake Decorating Adventure

As you can tell through my posts. I’m slowly trying to become domestic. DS’ birthday is coming up at the end of the month and I want to make him a Spiderman cake rather than buy it. I looked at some styles online and some looked pretty difficult while others didn’t so much.

Since Spiderman has a lot of detail (spider web lines all over) I got to thinking that it may get a touch messy using standard frosting then piping frosting on top. Plus, it seemed to me like fondant was really simple. I mean heck, you just “wrap” the cake in it. Let me just remind you. I am far from any cake expert. I’ve never used fondant before much less decorated a cake that didn’t require placing those pre-made sugar letters and shapes. So I knew this was going to be an adventure.

Just to see if I could master decorating a cake I decided to make a cake for our anniversary (it’s 4/12). Our wedding was at an old southern plantation house so we had a red velvet wedding cake. That’s the cake I decided to go ahead and make for this experiment. Of course, DH didn’t know it was an experiment lol. I used 2 round pans. Once cooled, I stacked the 2 cakes on top of each other. I then got all fancy and cut the dome of the top cake off so the top of the cake was flat. Now, what I found out if using fondant, you need to cover the cake in a buttercream frosting prior to using the fondant. So here’s the recipe I used:

3 cups powdered sugar (Make your own powdered sugar)
1/2 cup margarine or butter, softened
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1-2Tbsp. milkMix powdered sugar and margarine. Stir in vanilla and 1 Tbsp. milk. Beat until smooth. If the frosting is too stiff, add 1 more tablespoon of milk and beat again until smooth. This will frost 1 9×13 inch cake or 2 8-inch cakes. This can easily be halved. Frosting can be refrigerated for several weeks.

So the fondant. I made it using this recipe:

1 (14oz) can sweetened condensed milk
3 Tbsp. light corn syrup
2 tsp. vanilla
2 lb. powdered sugarBeat condensed milk, corn syrup and vanilla in a large bowl until well mixed. Stir in powdered sugar. There will be a large mass of crumbs. Turn onto a board and knead until smooth. Roll out as needed for cakes. To color: knead paste food coloring into fondant until desired shade is reached. Stores well in a sealed container in the refrigerator or freezer for several months.

I have a flimsy little plastic prep sheet I use when I roll out stuff. So I rolled out my fondant on it. Whenever it was time to place it on the cake, I took the whole sheet and peeled back the fondant from it kind of like a sticker as I was going across the cake. I was hoping this would allow it to lay out smoother and keep it from getting holes. It seemed to have worked pretty well. I only had a couple of holes but I was able to smooth the edges back together with great ease.I decorated the cake with a little bag and 5 tip set I bought brand new on Ebay for $4. You can use a ziplock bag and snip off a little bit of the edge of a corner to decorate with. Now, like I said prior, I’ve never decorated a cake before so don’t make fun. I used the left over buttercream frosting I had and used some red food coloring to make it pink. For a first timer, I think it came out alright. It doesn’t compare to a professionally made cake, but the price was right! Either way, the cake did taste good.

(click to see larger)

So for a first run through it didn’t seem as intimating as I thought it would be. I’m going to take on Spiderman cake and we’ll just go from there.

Both of the recpies come from the fab-u-lus book: Not Just Beans – 50 Years of Frugal Family Favorites.