Late Night, the other night....

Hey Chicas,

And no it is not what you’re thinking…..(minds out of the gutter people, haha).

The BF’s b-day was the other day, and because of all the craziness this week seemed to bring I couldn’t get his full gift finished. So I thought to myself well then since you can’t do it properly at the moment…just wait a few days and surprise him with it later. Plus, it extends the celebrations longer…big bonus in my books!

Now I’m sure that I have you wondering what exactly the “surprise” is, well chicas I am happy to tell you.

I’m a fairly good cook and baker, my brownies are the bomb peeps…no joke! So he had an ice cream cake from his parentals for his b-day so I wanted to do something homemade and different. I watch the Ace of Cakes, and Cake Boss and those other bakery types shows. Why? You may ask. Well they are just so darn pretty. If you are familiar with the shows you know that most of the cakes are covered in fondant. If you are not...you are now likely thinking you’ll have to google it. Did it for y’all.

Rolled fondant or fondant icing, which is not the same material as poured fondant, is commonly used to decorate wedding cakes. It includes gelatin (or agar in vegetarian recipes) and food-grade glycerin, which keep the sugar pliable and creates a dough-like consistency. It can also be made using powdered sugar and melted marshmallows. Rolled fondant is rolled out like a pie crust and used to cover the cake. This gives the cakes a smooth appearance. (gotta love good old wikipedia).

I did some searching on how to make fondant, some of the recipes are pretty intense, in both labour and ingredients. Some needing glycerin, and clear gelatin. Those were things that I just couldn’t pick up at the grocery store on a whim, plus I definitely didn’t have any in the house. I figured someone had to have come up with another option to the tradition fondant, and plus the traditional stuff, doesn’t taste that good, it is usually peeled off the cake and left on the plate…all that hard work I would go through to have it discarded like that…um I DON’T THINK SO Mr. Fondant!!!

I came across a marshmallow based fondant. The site is very descriptive and has many many tips to help you along the way. So my mom and I went at it the other night. It can get pretty darn messy at times. Mom used the Kitchen Aid Mixer to do the dough (just used the dough hook) which saved us a lot of time and energy. But the recipe suggests hand doing, so either way works. We started around 10pm and finished at midnight! Now the fondant had been made earlier, which when you visit the website you’ll understand, the timing. But after it was done, we were thinking that right after it was mixed would have been a great time to roll it on out and put it on, but this hasn’t been attempted and we aren’t sure if it would have worked anyway. So the time was the rolling the fondant out thinly, mine could have been a lot thinner, live and learn. 

Also we wanted to color some pieces, I wanted to make a hockey cake, so I found this hockey jersey cake recipe. And of course it had to be Canadian. It would have been easier if you had paste like food coloring, because the liquid we had to kneed, and kneed, and kneed, well you get the picture.

Anyway the website has everything you need to know on how to do it, it was our first time and it turned out kick ass! Just be patient and read the Q/A’s on the site to help you out.

This is the final result and he loved it, so did his friends, the ate it all even the fondant, so mission accomplished.

Happy Baking!!

Caitlin xoxo