The Great Cake Catastrophe
A couple of years ago when my daughter-in-law was expecting our grandson I decided to host a baby shower for her. I had been watching FoodNetwork and specifically the cake shows. They always worked with fondant icing and it always looked so nice. So I decided to bake the cake for the baby shower and frost it with fondant icing. I had grand design plans. It looked so cute in my mind's eye! I got a fondant recipe from my sister and after baking the cake and setting it on cooling racks I began to mix up the fondant. I had spent almost $30 on the ingredients as it called for egg white powder, clear butter flavor extract and a couple of other finishing tools that could only be found in the Wilton cake section and prices reflected this. I was now short on cash but long on imagination! I put the ingredients in the bowl and turned on the mixer. In about one minute with a grind and a puff of smoke the mixer was toast! So I put everything in the fridge and ran to Wal-Mart. Keeping in mind that I am now low on cash I purchased the cheapest mixer I could find and returned home. Pulling everything back out of the fridge, I proceeded to mix again and with a second gind and puff of smoke that mixer was toast as well! At this point, determined to finish I rolled up my sleeves, washed my hands and plunged into the fondant with both hands. Finally it was mixed well and I plopped the wad of fondant out onto a powder sugar dusted sheet of waxed paper. The next step was to roll it out but when I ran the rolling pin across it the whole wad encircled the rolling pin like a fat tire! Finally using tons more powdered sugar I was able to roll the fondant out into a semi-flat product that I could work with. Stacked the 2 layers with a strawberry cream cheese frosting between them. I carefully laid the fondant on top of the stacked cake layers and turned around to get a sharp knife to trim around the bottom. When I turned back to the cake the fondant had split right down the middle like The Great Divide and was lying on either side of the stacked layers! So I pulled it off, dusted a new wax paper with confectioners sugar and adding more sugar as I went, re-rolled the fondant into a dryer and thicker layer than before. Laid it back over the cake, trimmed around the edges, piped regular frosting onto one section to make a VERY BASIC stroller. I added 2 big frosted oatmeal cookies for the wheels. I went to sprinkle on crystallized sugar for the stroller hood and it rolled right off the cake every time! So I got the distilled water spray bottle that I use for ironing and sprayed that section, leaned the cake carefully and SWATTED crystallized sugar onto the cake so hard that it had to stick!
I will NEVER work with fondant again! I am attaching a pic of that silly cake. It doesn't reflect all the hours, money and heartache I spent on it!
Ha! Ha!
Mindy
A couple of years ago when my daughter-in-law was expecting our grandson I decided to host a baby shower for her. I had been watching FoodNetwork and specifically the cake shows. They always worked with fondant icing and it always looked so nice. So I decided to bake the cake for the baby shower and frost it with fondant icing. I had grand design plans. It looked so cute in my mind's eye! I got a fondant recipe from my sister and after baking the cake and setting it on cooling racks I began to mix up the fondant. I had spent almost $30 on the ingredients as it called for egg white powder, clear butter flavor extract and a couple of other finishing tools that could only be found in the Wilton cake section and prices reflected this. I was now short on cash but long on imagination! I put the ingredients in the bowl and turned on the mixer. In about one minute with a grind and a puff of smoke the mixer was toast! So I put everything in the fridge and ran to Wal-Mart. Keeping in mind that I am now low on cash I purchased the cheapest mixer I could find and returned home. Pulling everything back out of the fridge, I proceeded to mix again and with a second gind and puff of smoke that mixer was toast as well! At this point, determined to finish I rolled up my sleeves, washed my hands and plunged into the fondant with both hands. Finally it was mixed well and I plopped the wad of fondant out onto a powder sugar dusted sheet of waxed paper. The next step was to roll it out but when I ran the rolling pin across it the whole wad encircled the rolling pin like a fat tire! Finally using tons more powdered sugar I was able to roll the fondant out into a semi-flat product that I could work with. Stacked the 2 layers with a strawberry cream cheese frosting between them. I carefully laid the fondant on top of the stacked cake layers and turned around to get a sharp knife to trim around the bottom. When I turned back to the cake the fondant had split right down the middle like The Great Divide and was lying on either side of the stacked layers! So I pulled it off, dusted a new wax paper with confectioners sugar and adding more sugar as I went, re-rolled the fondant into a dryer and thicker layer than before. Laid it back over the cake, trimmed around the edges, piped regular frosting onto one section to make a VERY BASIC stroller. I added 2 big frosted oatmeal cookies for the wheels. I went to sprinkle on crystallized sugar for the stroller hood and it rolled right off the cake every time! So I got the distilled water spray bottle that I use for ironing and sprayed that section, leaned the cake carefully and SWATTED crystallized sugar onto the cake so hard that it had to stick!
I will NEVER work with fondant again! I am attaching a pic of that silly cake. It doesn't reflect all the hours, money and heartache I spent on it!
Ha! Ha!
Mindy
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