Fondant

[DisneyMomma81]

ekatiel ~ WOW I'm impressed! Great cakes ~ how'd you get the black so black??

 

[FourBees]

Do you put a layer of frosting on before the fondant and when you cut out the decorations to put on the cake do they stick right on or do you have to do something to make them stick?

 

[allonte]

OMG! those are so cool. I am going to take cake decorating class next month at Michael's maybe one day i can play with fondant and do cakes like this. I love the castle one.

If you are taking Wilton I, you'll be learning the basics with buttercream. IMO, you should at least know the basics taught in this class.

Do you put a layer of frosting on before the fondant and when you cut out the decorations to put on the cake do they stick right on or do you have to do something to make them stick?

You should put on a layer of frosting before the fondant. It makes it stick. You can just dampen it with a little water and it sticks!

 

[FourBees]

Thank you

 

[DisneyScraps]

This was my first fondant cake. I used the Duff stuff from Michaels. Every kid peeled it off. I planned to to cut out images from the fondant with my Cricut cake but that was a disaster so I improvised.

 

[ekatiel]

ekatiel ~ WOW I'm impressed! Great cakes ~ how'd you get the black so black??

I just used black gel food coloring. I didn't know it was supposed to be hard to make black! I guess I just got lucky!

OMG! those are so cool. I am going to take cake decorating class next month at Michael's maybe one day i can play with fondant and do cakes like this. I love the castle one.

Thanks . I haven't taken any classes, but I do watch all the cake shows on TV ! The castle cake is a mixture of cake and rice krispie treats-- the U shaped parts of the castle are rice krispie treats stuck to the front and back of square cakes (I saw the episode of Cake Boss where they made a castle cake ). The turrets (sp??) are two cake ice cream cones (the ones with the flat bottoms) stuck back to back with a sugar cone (the cone shaped ones) on the top. They are both covered in fondant. I would suggest just trying it out. It is time consuming, but not too dificult. One tip: Cover the cakes in a THIN layer of butter cream before covering with fondant. If you put too much icing, the fondant will not take the shape of the cake properly-- the icing will slide to the bottom, and squares will end up looking like pyramids with the tops cut off!--Katie

 

[CC12005]

Ekatiel great job on the cakes and thanks for posting the tips. What did you use for the texture of the castle cake? Was it a pebble stamp? Thanks.

 

[dhcoffey]

Just for another idea, when we made a cake for my niece's baby shower, we went to our local bakery who has great tasting fondant that they make and they sold us some plain fondant and then we colored it for what we needed. Worked out great for us and they sold it to us super cheap.

Heather

 

[hereyago]

If you are taking Wilton I, you'll be learning the basics with buttercream. IMO, you should at least know the basics taught in this class.

Yes, I am taking the basic beginner's decorating with the buttercream. i did write that hopefully one day i can work my way to fondant. Is there something I should know before? I have done basic store bought frosting, but can't seem to work with it well even at room tempature and the cake being cooled.

 

[ekatiel]

Ekatiel great job on the cakes and thanks for posting the tips. What did you use for the texture of the castle cake? Was it a pebble stamp? Thanks.

It was a Chef Duff texture sheet (is that the right word for it?) that I found at Michael's. I found it worked WAY better to roll the fondant, use the texture sheet, and THEN put it on the cake. On the shows, they always show them pressing the texture sheet up against the cake after the fondant's already on it. That TOTALLY did NOT work for me . The cake was too soft to really push hard enough to get the texture to show up. There's one part of that castle cake that has a double layer of fondant on it b/c I tried to do the texturing after I put the fondant on the first time! --Katie

 

[allonte]

Yes, I am taking the basic beginner's decorating with the buttercream. i did write that hopefully one day i can work my way to fondant. Is there something I should know before? I have done basic store bought frosting, but can't seem to work with it well even at room tempature and the cake being cooled.

No, that's the perfect beginner class. You'll have fun. Store bought icing sucks, lol. Buttercream has a stiffer consistency that makes it easy to decorate with. They have a Wilton Fondant class too. I was saying I think you should take Wilton I before expanding into the other classes. Hubs loved the cake I brought home at the end!

 

[lady_bug_888]

I haven't read ALL of the posts so if this was already posted sorry. I noticed someone said it's hard to make a true black fondant and while this is true--even when making a buttercream or royal icing--there is a trick I learned a few years back. You have to make the fondant brown first (cocoa powder works). After that you can use black dye and it should turn into a true black.

There is a good fondant recipe at the cook duke dot com. There are pictures as well to help you while you are making it!

 

[Redheaded Sunshine]

My Mom makes cakes as a hobby (although she is very, very good) and always refused to use fondant until she found the Wilton Marshmallow recipe. I have peeled off fondant in previous years because it is just gross, and Mom told me to try it. I still prefer icing, but the fondant is really good.
http://www.wilton.com/recipe/Rolled-Marshmallow-Fondant

I am not a cake decorator by any means, but I have tried to make cakes and have had fairly decent results with the fondant. Here is the second cake that I made, it was for my daughter's 7th Birthday. Being that it was only my second time working with fondant, I didn't think it was too bad.

Nice job You can do amazing things with fondant that you just CANNOT do with regular icing, even if it doesn't taste very good

That being said, I haven't tried the marshmallow kind.

 

[Redheaded Sunshine]

Do you put a layer of frosting on before the fondant and when you cut out the decorations to put on the cake do they stick right on or do you have to do something to make them stick?

Yes, definitely. This is Wilton recommended. Just a thin layer.

 

[Kudrah]

Another vote for MM fondant! It is super yummy and looks so nice. I made a Castle last year with all the princesses on it, dyed the fondant pink and then dusted it with pearlescent dust and it looked soooo pretty.

 

[Redheaded Sunshine]

Yes, I am taking the basic beginner's decorating with the buttercream. i did write that hopefully one day i can work my way to fondant. Is there something I should know before? I have done basic store bought frosting, but can't seem to work with it well even at room tempature and the cake being cooled.

Make your own frosting, the store bought stuff will never work as well as homemade, in buttercreme frosting anyway. I would recommend making your own royal icing as well. Make it STIFF to start with, you can always mix in a couple drops of water, eyedroppers are your friends.

If you want to make whipped icing, you can use the Wilton mix, tastes good and mixes well, but this isn't as good for decorating.

 

[SoonerSarah]

I completely agree with those that say you ice before putting on fondant.

And don't over-ice. That is my problem, and why you can see dimples in the fondant, instead of it being perfectly smooth. This is also a measure twice, cut once kind of situation. You want to make sure that the fondant you roll out is more than big enough to cover the cake, because if you lay it down and your fondant is too small and the icing is stuck on the fondant, you dont have too many options. And then its also messier.

 

[tinkercat]

I made my first fondant covered cake a little over a week ago after discovering that none of our local bakeries could make me the Super Mario themed cake that my son insisted on for his birthday. A Mario cake was his only request and I couldn't let him down!

I used the marshmallow fondant and I was so happy with how the cake turned out, esp. for my first time! We'll definitely use it again.

Thye lighting isn't great in the pic, because I took the photo at night after I finished the decorating. The figures on top are the only non-fondant decorations. I did the rest. The decorations go all around the cake, but here is an idea of how it turned out. Fondant is FUN!

 

[DisneyMomma81]

Great job tinkercat ~ that's a fantastic cake!

 

[aaarcher86]

We used the prepackaged Wilton fondant on my daughter's last birthday cake. We used it a few years ago and it tasted like poo. This time it was actually good according to the cake eaters. It was the most intricate cake we've made, but by far the easiest. We were dreading using fondant but it wasn't hard since we had a vague idea of what to do and watched several youtube videos lol. I will say that it looked a ton better after we found my 'smoother' tool to make the fondant smooth after it was on the cake.