Tag Archives: fondant

Halloween-inspired Fancy Cake

 

Cake drawing
My daughter wanted a wedding-style, multi layered cake for her 12th birthday. Here’s the original sketch I drew to flesh out some ideas, including using gum paste to mimic a skirt for the bottom tier. In addition, I thought I might make gum paste or fondant ruffles, to adorn the top tier in ombre colored layers, but ultimately, I just cold-carved the Italian meringue buttercream and left it plain for its smooth and crisp-edged look. Because my daughter’s party was just two days before Halloween, we started thinking about how to make it Halloween themed, but also keep the fancy cake as planned. We toyed with a half and half cake where one side was “dead” (black/grey) and the other half looked normal, but ultimately decided to go with a plain-old bloody fondant knife and fake rubber spiders. Each tier is an easy, moist, make-ahead chocolate cake from the Barefoot Contessa Parties cookbook. There are three layers separated by chocolate ganache (a different ganache recipe –yielding more spreadable results–than the one in the Barefoot Contessa cookbook). The top tier is 3 layers of the same chocolate cake, but layered with an Italian Vanilla Buttercream.
Creepy Cake
The full cake. I wanted to make it look like a fancy wedding cake, with the obvious differences…
Fondant Knife
Here’s a close-up of the fondant knife–complete with some bloody fingerprints.
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The top of the cake. I experimented with making different kinds of flowers with gum paste– a peony, roses, and the small white “filler” flowers that would mimic fresh flowers on a real cake. I formed the curve of each peony layer using various sized cupcake wrappers and cupcake tins with a tinfoil “hammock” inside. I dusted the edges of the flower with luster dust to make it look more realistic.

Birthday Magic

Magic Cake
December 5, 2015: A magic themed fondant cake. The actual cake is under the (all edible) sequined “blanket’. Fondant goodies in and around the hat are two scarves, a magic wand, two bunnies, 3 playing cards, many dice, a white dove and a knotted rope.  The skinny metal looking things in the back are sparklers which we lit as we sang the Birthday Song.  
Here's the original sketch I made while trying to figure out how to make this cake
Here’s the original sketch I made while trying to figure out how to make this cake
Bunny
A magician always pulls a bunny out of his hat! Bunny is flanked by a wand, dice, playing cards and colorful scarves
Fondant playing cards
Fondant playing cards
Second bunny and knotted rope

Carnival Funland

Doughnut Extravaganza

fondant doughnuts
December 2014: Here are some of the first mini doughnuts I made. All are made of fondant and topped with royal icing. The sprinkles are actual sprinkles!
fondant glazed doughnuts
I experimented making glazed doughnuts. Some I used just painted with translucent royal icing. Some I painted with gelatin so that it would peel a bit and look translucent when dry. And some I covered in clear glitter flakes.
fondant doughnuts for cupcakes
Fondant doughnuts

 

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My almost 8 year old daughter made the kitten + accessories in the upper right of the picture. She also made the two doughnuts at the very top!
Fondant doughnuts on cupcakes
Here they are!  I wanted each cupcake to resemble a little picnic table, so I wrapped them with red gingham waxed tissue tied with a white ribbon.  Then, I topped each cupcake with a smooth white fondant round before topping each with the doughnuts.  
fondant doughnut topped cupcakes
An aerial view
fondant doughnut topped cupcake
some close-ups
fondant doughnut topped cupcakes
The “powdered sugar” on the doughnuts was actually dried white fondant that I ground up in a coffee grinder.
fondant topped cupcakes
A plate of mini cupcakes
fondant cupcake
This cupcake was the birthday girl’s favorite: Hot chocolate with marshmallows + a Malasada (Portuguese doughnut).

 

Disco Fever

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October 2014: My daughter wanted a dance party themed birthday party.  I immediately thought of a dance floor cake and sketched out the drawing above.   My daughter made one of my characters into a goblin– hence the big, pointy ears.
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I knew my cake would need a disco ball, but the only way I could envision hanging it, would be to build a wooden structure around the cake so the disco ball could hang down. Here is a photo of my cardboard prototype.
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I took my prototype to a nearby Home Depot to ask for help on how to  build it, as I knew I would need some sort of brackets for the angled roof. Something magical happened there, and after 15 minutes of them trying to find the right person to help me, Eddie arrived.  It was soon understood that Eddie was not going to help me make the structure, but he was actually going to make it FOR me.  He built it in two days complete with a paint job and silver glitter pinstriping.   When I got to the store to pick up the structure, Eddie and I talked about lights, and he glued in two battery powered LED lights right then and there. Eddie’s supervisor came by to check out the structure and take a few pictures.   Amazingly, they wouldn’t let me pay for anything.
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Here are the beginnings of my fondant dancers.
fondant
This guy was modeled after John Travolta’s famous pose in Saturday Night Fever.
edible sequins disco ball
The disco ball is made out of molded Rice Krispies Treats  covered in fondant. I looked into buying silver sequins– or something I could use to mimic the reflective surface.  A small jar of sequins was expensive and not exactly what I had in mind, so I decided to make my own. I found an online tutorial from Kara’s Couture Cakes and made one big gelatin sheet.  Once it was dry, I hand cut the sheet into small squares.
fondant covered cake
Here’s a picture of the whole cake. I also made lime green and black sequins to decorate the edges of the dance floor.  I covered the cake in black fondant and then laid out the black and white fondant tiles.

fondant covered Disco cake

fondant cake
A close-up of my Solid Gold dancer.
fondant cake
John Travolta’s protoge
fondant cake
Shooting the moon!

 

 

Puppies & Kittens

 

Fondant puppy and kitten cake
December 2013: This was my first attempt at animals so I did watch a couple of fondant tutorials to figure out how to make basic animal forms.
Fondant puppy and kitten cake
Having a kitten playing with a giant yarn ball was an obvious thing I knew I wanted to do.
Fondant puppy and kitten cake
This is supposed to be a small puppy sitting by his ball, but the ball ended up a bit squat.  Once I added the stars, I couldn’t get the ball round again without altering the shape of the stars.
Fondant puppy and kitten cake
The cake is a triple layer chocolate cake that I covered in fondant and made into the cushion.
Fondant puppy and kitten cake
My daughter decided on the color scheme for each of the animals. This is the curious kitten.
Fondant puppy and kitten cake
My daughter rolled the little bits of brown fondant to be dog food. The rug is made of royal icing using the “hair” tip. And the water in the dog bowl is actually Karo light corn syrup.
Fondant puppy and kitten cake
lazy fondant dog + bone

 

Candyland

fondant
October 2013:  This project was one of those that continued to morph well beyond my initial plan, even as I was putting it all together the last day. I knew I wanted a gum ball tree with a swing, and I knew I wanted a chocolate waterfall that created a chocolate lake.   The mountain and tree are molded from Rice-Krispies Treats mixture. Once it hardened, I covered everything in fondant.  Originally, my plan was to create the colorful walking path and intersperse the individual cupcakes on the white areas. But then….
fondant with crushed candies
I decided that I didn’t want just the white background for my cupcakes, so I thought I would find a way to make the base green, like grass. I decided on crushed up green candies, but since I had to buy bags of multicolored candies, my idea morphed into a much more psychedelic experience than I had planned.
fondant cupcakes
Here’s a not so great photo of my all edible Candyland. I had a hard time trying to get the best angle to capture it all.
fondant cupcakes
All of the candies & treats on the cupcakes are made of fondant.
fondant cupcakes
I decided to add a mermaid diving into the chocolate lake. Her tail is adorned with slivers of jellybeans, and the splash is made of  hardened chocolate.
fondant cupcakes
The chocolate bars are made of fondant and stamped with my daughter’s initials. I did re-use a Ghirardelli chocolate bar wrapper to wrap my fake bars.
fondant cupcakes
The gum balls are real gum balls. Originally, I was going to make all of the gum balls out of fondant, but I decided that real gum balls would be way more  visually appealing and exciting.   I also had planned to make a fondant person sitting on the swing, but my daughter thought it would better if we used the playing pieces from the Candyland game to really hammer the theme home.