So this was a cake I made for my friend Emily’s going away party. Some of her friends at the library wanted to have a last movie night. We usually have a theme for movie night based on a movie. For instance, when we watched Jaws, it was a shark theme. We originally were going to watch the Librarian 2, but the DVD didn’t work. Emily had a backup movie, Amelie. So naturally the theme was Emily. Either it was her favorite movie or she was Amelie. I am not sure.
The last movie night we had a shark theme, I made a sad looking sharknado out of cotton candy. It was a disaster. So I wanted to totally redeem myself. That is why I chose to bake a fondant cake. I promised everyone that it was going to be legendary. Well, it might not have been epic, but people were impressed at my first attempt.
I have a confession to make about this cake. First, it was completely edible, despite everyone being afraid to cut and eat it. Thanks to Bryan for taking the leap of faith. The secret about the cake is that I didn’t bake the cake. I didn’t have enough time. Instead I took two cakes and scrapped off the icing. One cake was from Walmart and the other from Wegmans. Why two cakes from two different places? Simple, availability and cost. Walmart had the perfect shaped cake for the bottom and Wegmans covered the top. For the cost, if I only bought Wegmans, the cake would have been $50+.
So, what is fondant? Well, it is basically a sugar based play-dough that is totally safe to eat. I know because Bryan didn’t get sick that night. Oh, the figure on the cake who was Emily was not edible. But her hair was edible. That is because I had to make the hair from fondant. The reason why I had to add hair. Well, it turns out it is very hard to find a hiker figure in the stores. If you haven’t figured it out, Emily loves to hike. So it makes sense to have a hiker theme cake. Anyway, I looked every where for a outdoor type figure. The best I could do was a male farmer. Add a ponytail, then poof you get a female hiker.
Rolling out the fondant was really easy. I was surprised how easy it was to shape and cut. I can’t believe how easy it was to use. But despite being easy, I still managed to stay up until 3 am to make the cake. Why did it take so long?
The cake took so long because coloring fondant was almost impossible. Fondant comes in white and needs food coloring to give it color. What I learned that night was that the color darkens as time passes. So basically, when I thought I had the right shade of green, the fondant started to turn grey after a few hours. Which I didn’t realize until it was too late. That is also why you see the green grass added to the cake with hardening icing. That was a last minute trick I used to make the cake look better.
Pretzel sticks were used for the trees. That worked out great. The gold and silver sprinkles for the river beds. That didn’t go over so well. People asked if it was gold and she was digging for it like a prospector. As for the “This is Amazing” writing, that was not me praising my cake work of art. It was my attempt of making a phrase out of one of Emily’s favorite words at work. When we talked about projects, she would always say “It is going to be amazing.” I figured it was fitting for the cake.
