Friday, February 19, 2010

I Freakin LOVE Fondant!!

After a couple week break I am back in action with the cake decorating classes. I started Course 3 last Thursday (yes, I skipped Course 2...long story short, they don't offer them in order but you can take whichever class you want after finishing Course 1). The first class was a lot of talky talky with a little bit of piping work but nothing too exciting to talk about. Last night though, we started fondant and let me tell you, I am in LOVE! I instantly took to it and had a ton of fun messing around although it is a bitch on the wrists.

We started the class making fondant roses which came out so much better than the buttercream roses I attempted a few weeks ago. I love the fact that I can play an active role in molding and shaping these roses to make them look exactly how I want them to. I'll break down the process for ya: First you have to knead your fondant until it's nice and malleable, then you can work in the coloring...I chose purple. Then you roll it out until it's super smooth and about 1/16th of an inch thick. Next you use the handy little rose cutter and cut out three shapes like this one:


Once your shapes are cut out you take a weird tool that looks like a plastic pencil with a ball on top and you thin out the edges of the petals and make them kinda wavey.


After you do that to all three of your cutouts you place them one by one onto the rose center shown here:


You can use vanilla extract, water or vodka to brush onto each petal and then you gently curl them up and around the center until they stick where you want them to.


Once all your layers are on and sticking well, you can pinch and pull at the petal to get the look you want, this was my finished creation:


After working on a few roses, it was time to cover my cake with fondant. Again you have to do a lot of kneading and rolling, making sure you have it big enough to cover your entire cake. Then you roll it onto the cake and start smoothing, smoothing, smoothing until you can't smooth no more! I was pretty damn proud of how my first attempt came out!


Once my cake was covered, I colored more fondant, this time going with a gorgeous blue color that I decided to leave a little bit marbleized cuz I thought it looked cool. I cut out strips for the ribbon and bow and a bunch of stars to applique on my cake and voila!! I love, love, love how it turned out. I was even proud enough to take to work with me today to show my coworkers :)






I can't wait to do more with fondant, I see very fun projects in my future!