A First Holy Communion Cake

So last week I posted that a friend of a friend had asked me, via text by my friend, to make the same rose cake for her daughter's First Holy Communion this weekend.  (Was that confusing enough? ; )  When I actually spoke with the woman on the phone and said, "So, you want the exact same cake?" her response was not what I expected.  "Actually, I saw this cake on Pinterest and was wondering if you could do that."  Gulp.  I've seen cakes on Pinterest.  They're usually gorgeous and very detailed.  I mean, that's why people post them, right?  She sent me the picture and I studied it.  And studied it.  And studied it some more.  I called her back and said that I thought I could pull of something similar.  It would be great learning opportunity for me.  The most important thing I learned was to store the cake out of the reach of my toddler.  Remember what happened with my practice rose cake?  Yes and that's why you can see it here in the top of my pantry.

 

 

Once covered in fondant, you have to set the cakes aside for awhile before you dowel them (put the support sticks in).  That's why I needed a safe place to put them for awhile.  I loosely covered them in plastic wrap and left the pantry open in order to keep fresh air flowing.  I didn't want the cake to absorb stale pantry air.  Going back to the dowels, I only doweled the bottom layer, using inflexible drinking straws.  The thought of using wooden dowels in a cake does not appeal to me.  I'm afraid of splinters in the cake, so inflexible drinking straws is a good alternative that a lot of people use.  To dowel the layers together for transport, I'm guessing that you would have to use a wooden dowel.  I haven't looked into that as I haven't needed to yet. 

 

 

So here is the finished product.

 



 

 

 

My favorite part of this cake is the bow.  This was really so easy to make. 

 

 

 

 

Here is an excellent tutorial for making not only this type of fondant bow, but also a Tiffany bow of fondant.  Seriously, ANYONE can do this!  It is that easy.  Give it a shot.

 

Happy Mother's Day to all of you moms out there!

 

 

 





 



A Happy Birthday Easter Cake - More Fun With Fondant

Tomorrow we will be celebrating many birthdays along with Easter.  One family member actually has a birthday tomorrow.  I was asked to make the cake so I decided to do a two-tier cake with the bottom layer being the birthday cake and the top layer having a more spring-like theme.  I had intended to do more decorations but I've been sick the past several days and had a slightly sick baby, too.  So after five hours in the kitchen this afternoon, beginning with making the cake and ending with the fondant decorations, I decided I better finish up and feed the family dinner.

I was able to get four names across the bottom (sending a shout out right now to my sister Ann and my nephew Luke for having nice short names...thanks!), each separated with a fondant candle. 

Now that I've had a few attempts working with fondant, I thought I'd share a few things I really like about it. 

1.  A lot of people seem to like the taste.  That is a bit of a relief to me because I am not particularly fondant of it.  (I know...really bad joke. ; )  Some day soon I'm going to attempt to make my own.  I've already purchased the supplies to try it; I just haven't had time.

2. I prefer to buy white fondant and add my own color.  At first I was hesitant to do this but fondant takes color so well...and easily!  (You might want to wear decorating gloves when doing this because your hands take color easily too. : )  When doing this I recommend the old rule of "Start with a little; you can always add more."  I had intended for a much more pastel look on this cake, but ended up with really bold colors.  It still came out ok.  It just wasn't what I had planned for. (Here's a picture with better lighting so you can see what I'm referring to.)

3.  I really like that fondant is very much like playdough in that you can always re-roll and remold it.  There were a few times when I messed up with the fondant molds in doing the letters and trim.  No problem.  Simply re-roll and put it back in the mold.  EASY!

Other notes:

This is the second time I've tried a two-tiered fondant cake and neither time have I used supports and had no problems.  I'm guessing that's because I used 6-inch and 8-inch pans.  If I went bigger, I would probably have to dowel it.  But for these sizes at least I could get away with no dowels. 

The cake is almond flavored, filled with lemon curd, and frosted with an almond flavored butter cream.

Happy Easter!