My not so fabulous fondant...

So, today I assembled the fondant I made last week into a cake. It is certainly not perfect. In fact, there is a ton of stuff wrong with it, but I think it turned out pretty good for a first attempt. Now, no one is allowed to laugh at this, okay?


I definitely rolled the fondant out too think, which is painfully obvious in the picture. And I just could not get the edges smooth -- there are a ton of wrinkles and folds in the fondant. And there is a ton of powdered sugar on the top of the cake. And, well, we'll just leave it at that. What I learned:

1. Fondant must be thin enough that the decorative pieces aren't too heavy to adhere and that the sides can be smoothed without massive wrinkles.

2. Too thick of a layer of buttercream under the fondant is bad -- very very bad. The buttercream squished around under the fondant, making an even more un-even looking appearance.

3. I need a few more tools before trying this again, namely a plastic ruler and a non-stick plastic knife. I had a hard time cutting the ribbon.

4. Three year olds are not helpful when rolling out fondant.

The cake itself was fabulous. I used the Blackout Cake recipe from Karen Barker's "Sweet Stuff" (a book I highly recommend, by the way -- the Peppermint Pattie cake is divine), which is absolutely my favorite chocolate cake recipe ever. I iced the cake with white chocolate buttercream and filled it with white chocolate hazelnut buttercream. I wasn't overly fond of the hazelnuts. I think I would have liked it better if I had ground them up finer and perhaps added a bit of hazelnut extract. The buttercream was amazing, however, which is saying a lot, as I generally don't like buttercream.

The fondant was okay -- it is just really really sweet and a bit chewy. It is a bit like having a layer of taffy on the outside of the cake. It is certainly edible, but not desirable in my book. Fortunately, you can just peel the fondant off the outside if you don't want it. It definitely is fun to work with and the effect is really cool, so I'll be trying this again soon. In fact, I'll probably be trying it for Reid's birthday in a few weeks...now just to figure out a Hawaiian themed cake for him!