I finally made it...

Well, it was finally time to decorate the cake! I took the fondant out and started rolling...but there was one problem. I didn't have enough to cover the cake. I was so mad! So what I ended up having to do is cut the cake. I turned a 9 in round cake into a 4-5 inch round cake. I tried my best but some of the sides began to crumble away, but it definitely looked like a circle which is the most important.

I laid the fondant down and began to decorate. I made my leaves with cookie cutters and I stuck them on with Vodka (any clear alcohol will do but water would be the worst thing to use) - the Vodka also helps with eliminating the powdery look of the fondant. It was okay for being my first cake but I still wish I could have done better. It would have been great to have made the leaves look real instead of like clay...BUT...I was happy with my little pumpkin.

(If you're interested, this was made with orange fondant, rolled into a ball and a clove as the stem.) Overall, I'm happy I attempted to try my hand at decorating cakes. Next time will hopefully be better...but I don't think it will be right away, my arms and hands are still sore...:o)

CRAP! Handling Fondant is Hard!

To stay true to my commitment I needed to dye the fondant today. The fondant had been in the fridge all night and man oh man did I not know what I was in for! I knew that I was going to have to knead it into a workable consistency but I didn't think that it would have used so much muscle...ha!

Anyway, after I got the fondant pliable, I divided it up into a few balls and began dying. I have decided that I want my cake to be about Fall so the colors I created were beige, brown, orange, green and yellow. All I had were the primary colors but I did some mixin' and made it work. Tomorrow we lay the fondant and actually decorate!

My New Obsession With Cake Decorating

Lately, I have been addicted to shows like Food Network's Cake Challenges, Ace of Cakes and TLC's Cake Boss. I am in complete awe of how these people can make these huge works of art with cake and since I've started watching these shows I have learned the difference between fondant, gumpaste, modeling chocolate, royal icing, ganache, etc. Anyway, I became inspired; I love using my hands and being creative so I decided to try my hand at cake decorating.

I decided that I would make FONDANT (a smooth icing that is used to cover cakes)...not to mention I always wanted to know what it tasted like. It turns out that many people don't like the taste of regular fondant not to mention the recipe calls for things like glycerin of which I had none and didn't feel like searching for in Walmart. So there is a marshmellow recipe online that many people prefer - I also ended up finding a video tutorial which was good because it gave me confidence.

RECIPE:

• 1 bag of mini marshmellows
• 1 can of crisco (to oil your hands and the work-surface)
• 1 tspn of water
• 1 bag of powdered sugar ( I only used half of the bag)

After I had all of my ingredients ready and my counter was sanitized and prepped with Crisco (trust me, the Crisco is necessary!) I popped the marshmellows into the microwave in 30 second increments until they were melted...I stirred 'em and then poured it into my little mountain of powdered sugar.

I kept kneading it into a little ball...

And then I stored it into a baggie so that it won't get hard because tomorrow I will separate it into a few smaller bags and begin dying.

Stay Tuned!

These twins are killing it! I had to share this with you.