Friday, September 25, 2009

Not So "Ace" of Cakes




I come up with ideas that sometimes turn into all out disasters and too often I catch myself saying to myself, "what was I thinking?!" Today I had another one of those not so finest of moments!

My hubby's birthday is Sunday so naturally I decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to practice my cake decorating. Jaxon & I found a recipe for a homemade chocolate cake and decided since Grandma's b-day cake was white, we'd dabble in chocolate. We made the cake yesterday, so we could freeze it and have it ready for this mornings grand adventure!

When Kent and I got married I asked my cake lady to use fondant instead of the traditional wedding cake frosting that gives everyone bad belly aches. She sort of chuckled and said that she didn't do fondant. When I asked why, she told me that it didn't taste good and that it was hard to work with. I am a huge fan of the TV shows Ace of Cakes & Cake Boss! They are constantly using fondant... what could be so hard?!

I found a recipe online for a marshmallow fondant and decided to give it a try. The recipe was relatively easy to follow and I was excited to begin my practice session. I for some unknown reason decided to wait on coloring my fondant until the day of decorating... this was my first mistake!

Jaxon had decided that we needed to make a Superman cake for Daddy so I got busy making my stencils and thought to myself, "this is so simple, why haven't I tried this before?!" (Keep in mind, I am just drawing shapes and cutting them out at this point!)

I woke up this morning to a not so clean kitchen so while I waited for Jaxon to get up, I cleaned! By the time he woke up I had the cake prepped and the frosting ready... (oh yeah, did I mention that you must have regular frosting covering your cake before you lay your fondant over it?!) Anyway, we quickly frosted the cake, no problems there. We set aside a little extra to use as adhesive for our cut out shapes and began to unwrap our ball of fondant.

I split the fondant into 3 sizes and began coloring the base for the cake. This is when my morning got a little interesting! First of all, the food coloring wasn't blending quite as well as I had imagined and the fondant was taking on a marbled look! Second, I ran out of blue food coloring so when I finally got it blended the color wasn't right! Next I found that the wooden rolling pin I bought the other day doesn't work too good and that my Mom's marble pin will be borrowed for my next adventure! And finally, (this is my favorite part), the wax paper I was rolling my fondant out on had stuck to the frosting so when I went to peel it up to lay it over the cake, it wouldn't budge! I had to start rolling it out all over again after prying it up with a knife!!!

I, at that point sent Jaxon to the living room for some cartoons, turned up Pandora Radio on my computer, used a few choice words and decided that I was not giving up! Two and a half hours later from the time I started, I had a Superman cake. It's not as pretty as I had hoped but it's done! And if you didn't already think I was crazy... I am SO doing it again in a few weeks for Jaxon's birthday!




2 comments:

Ann said...

I think it looks great!!! I love making cakes but have never tired fondant before either!! I love Cake Boss and also love the way he say "fondant" on the show all the time!! Can't wait to see the birthday cake next month!!

Suzy Shoup said...

Looks pretty good to me! So excited to have found your blog, girl and am linking it to mine so we can share our Jaxon/Jackson! :)