Well, I am NOT a baker (especially of cakes) but Shari has tasked me with making her wedding cake in January of next year.

It is covered with fondant & until last month I had never been closer to fondant than eating it on a cake someone else made & admiring the beauty. So I had a crash course as Shari’s at our last month’s get-together.

I found that it is not TOOOOOO hard to work with..you just have to know what to do with it. I didn’t find out all about it until I worked with it at home on my own.

When Jen was here last weekend to do karaoke at the VFW, I made my practice cake & fondants. Part of the cake (the little top one) has a store bought (Duff Goldman of Ace of Cakes) fondant & the larger one has a home made marshmallow fondant. That in itself was soooo much fun!

I had Shari email me the recipe so I could make it. It is water, marshmallows, & powdered sugar. Needless to say it was a MESS. I had powdered sugar all over me, the counter, & the bowl (where the fondant was).

I should have done a bit of research before I started rolling it out – found out I should have been using powdered sugar to roll it on & NEVER knead it like bread. I got air bubbles in my fondant when I tried to roll it. Jen did a bit of research for me & found that I should not be folding it over on itself as this incorporates air – duh.

The cake is a Red Velvet (box mix) by Duff Goldman (as mentioned above). I have never been much of a cake baker so I had forgotten that cakes sometimes have lots of air bubbles in them. The chocolate cake I made for my granddaughter’s birthday in July was not too bad but the practice one I made at Shari’s was HORRIBLY bubbly, like Swiss cheese or a sponge.

Anyway, cakes were made – 8″ & 9″ cakes, frozen. Frosting made for the cake & decorator’s icing – my refrigerators were definitely on sugar overload.

In order to roll out the fondant, Shari loaned me her Wilton Fondant mat – which helped a lot..gave me sizes to roll out to be sure it would cover the cake.

I bought a 19″ x 2″ wooden rolling pin (it says it’s a rolling dowel). This will be big enough to cover almost any cake.

Fondants rolled, flowers made (the marshmallow flower was easier to mold but the store bought fondant flower kept its shape better).

Cakes assembled, straws placed for strength, layers laid. Next, what to do about the ribbon thing. I sure hope Shari has a ribbon cutter, if not..OH, BOY!!!!..lol

For those of you who might not know me, I am the studious, meticulous, straight by the book person so when it came time to finish putting the cake together, it was a nightmare – not really.

It was hard to tell exactly how the cake was put together so I did the best I could and I think, after the cakes were together, that the little one should have been slightly off-center. I couldn’t get the calla lily to lay on the bottom layer like the picture showed. Also, instead of the silver decoration, I just used white decorator icing, mostly for effect as I didn’t have the stuff to make it silver.

Jen said she thinks Shari is going to want the ribbon to be the red she picked for her wedding. I told her I didn’t know but that I was going to make it look as close to the picture as possible that other stuff can be done on the OFFICIAL cake.

Now for the pearls .Shari said they are EASY. lol I went to the internet for some instruction & couldn’t find a lot other than to use fondant pearls. The pearls around the upper cake were done with decorator icing & the ones around the bottom were fondant circles cut with my larger straight decorating tip.

Here is the picture:

Now, how did it taste? On Friday, I cut the cake & what a mess. In order to cut the bottom cake, I had to remove the upper cake. Both cakes are on cardboard covered with aluminum foil (had no decorators foil). I forgot to put something on the bottom of the upper cake so when lifted it off the fondant & icing from the bottom cake came off with the top.

I took the top cake off of the cardboard & set it on a paper plate while I repaired the bottom cake. As long as no one else saw it, no problem lol.  Setting the top cake back down helped.

My husband, Dale said it was okay but a little dry (the thing had been sitting in the fridge or freezer for almost a week-what do you expect lol). It had really good flavor but Dale said the fondant was too thick. I said I rolled it out to 1/8″ like Shari said.  He said it’s more like 1/4″. What happened???????  The icing under the cake had melded in with the fondant to make it look like the fondant was way too thick.

Personally, I thought the whole cake was just fine. I KNOW the plates are a bit busy lol.

That’s all for the Perils from the Kitchen for now!

The cake design is from Rose Levy Bernbaum’s “The Cake Bible.”  You can find more of her designs at http://www.realbakingwithrose.com