I have received a few queries about my fondant cake. The bright spectacular cake I made for my little girls second birthday. Was it hard? How did you do it? How long did it take? …
Easy fondant cake you say… ha…. well let’s just say I thought it was going to be much harder. Just think of fondant like play dough… roll it out, play with it and have some fun.
So here are my tips from scratch on how to make an easy fondant cake:
1. Decide on your cake:
The most important aspect about the cake is the height! You want it to have some height in order to cover it with fondant. First attempt for me, I tried a flour less chocolate cake. It did not rise! It was more like a solid brownie but half the height.
I decided on a dairy free orange cake:
Ingredients:
- 125g margarine
- 1 cup caster sugar
- Zest of an orange
- 1 orange cut up into bit size pieces
- 3 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups self-raising flour
- ¼ cup soy milk
Method:
Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease and line a 20cm round cake tin.
Place all ingredients in a mixing bowl and beat on low speed until just combined.
Increase speed and beat until smooth.
stir through orange pieces
Pour into prepared tin and bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
Allow cake to cool for 5 minutes in the tin and then turn out onto a cake tray to cool.
note: I also added a little almond meal for extra taste and texture, probably about 1/4 cup.
This cake is adapted from a Kidspot recipe which you can view here.
2. Trim cake edges:
Trim the sides of the cake with a knife to make it as even and smooth as possible. Trim the top of the cake as well to try and make it as flat as possible. This will make it easier to cover the cake with fondant.
3. Put cakes together:
If like me you want two cakes, you will need to stick them together. You can either do this with an orange jam between them or with a butter cream which I used. See below for butter cream recipe
4. Coat cake/s with butter cream icing
You need to coat the cake with butter cream for the fondant to stick to it. Using an icing spatula, cover the whole cake with icing. For an easy butter cream recipe I used:
125g margarine
1/2 cup icing sugar
2 tbs orange juice
Beat all the ingredients together until smooth
5. Covering the cake with fondant
Youtube has amazing videos on how to cover a cake with fondant. I would strongly recommend going and viewing some of the videos because this is something better explained in a video. Believe me, it is not hard! Just search for “covering a cake with fondant”.
It really is just a matter of kneading your already-made fondant, rolling it out and putting it on top. Easy!
6. Decorate
Once you have decided on how you want to decorate your cake, let your mind run wild. I started off with something easy – flower shapes and flowers.
I bought already coloured fondant so I did not have to fiddle around with colouring fondant. This is not hard, just an extra step and process of dipping a little colouring into the fondant and kneading it. If you want to colour your fondant again I would suggest going onto Youtube and searching for “how to colour fondant“.
Flowers:
roll out your fondant. Once it is even, just use cookie cutters or fondant cutters to cut your flowers.
To achieve the layering effect, simply cut out smaller flowers to put on top of the larger ones.
Attach fondant to fondant with a little water. You can also use fondant glue which you buy from cake decorating stores. I used a little water put on with a paint brush.
Butterflies:
Same as the flowers, just cut out larger butterflies and attach the smaller ones on top.
base rope trimming:
Roll out your fondant in two 1/4 inch diameter pieces in the same length. Lay pieces side by side and join together at top. Put one piece over the other until you have reached its end.
If it breaks, don’t worry, just attach the new rope trimming to the end of the last. Attach to the base of the cake with a little water.
What fondant did i use:
I bought already made fondant by Wilton. There are many different brands you could buy, I chose this one because of dietry/Kosher requirements. You can also buy packs of different colours. I bought these from Amazon from the US but I have also seen them in Matchbox.
Cake toppers:
You can buy cake toppers from cake decorating stores. I actually got some craft butterflies from the two-dollar store and some flower-wire from a craft store and attached the wire to the butterflies. This was half the price and I found it really easy.
Extra tips:
- You want to complete your cake 24 hours before the party to allow the fondant to dry.
- Do the first fondant layer at least the day or evening before the decorating to allow to set
- If you can get a revolving/turning cake board this would make it easier. I managed without.
- Buy cake boards from cake stores or some homeward stores
Just remember, have fun!
Have you ever made a fondant cake?
If so, what are your extra little tips?
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