It is my father in laws birthday on Friday. My sister in law said make whatever you like, so we thought we would make a cake we had been wanting to try for ages... a present cake with a loopy bow on top.

First disaster was we did not get the dark chocolate brown colour we were after for the bow, it looked like a terracotta colour.

We made the loopy bow pieces according to the tutorial on CC.

The pieces were way too thick... even though we followed the measurements on the tutorial. They were dry but I would say not dry enough even after almost 48 hours.

We did not calculate the length of the strips correctly. The tutorial did NOT give any guidance on this. We did take into consideration the size of the cake to be but obviously did not take into consideration how bulky it would all be when it sat together and therefore the strips needed to be much shorter.

So to sum up due to the thickness of the pieces and then length of the pieces it ended up looking like one big mess..... I am so dissappointed

What are we going to make him now with such little time?

I guess that will teach us for leaving it so close to the end. Everyone said start early but I thought, we'll be ok, I am so mad with ourselves.

Thanks for listening... I Just had to let all that out!

I feel your pain on the bow....last week there was a post by Stephanie214 in it with lots of great information on bows - we were having the same problems with lenghts and such - it will help you if you read it...

Just do a search in the forums for "fondant bows" and you will find it.

But since you are in a time crunch right now I have done bows out of royal icing and saw a beautiful one yesterday done out of chocolate. these will both dry fast - maybe you could do one like this instead.

Though since the birthday is not till friday I think you would have time to make your bow again. Just add some gumtex to your MMF and roll it out a bit thinner. That is what I did and hung them to dry overnight and by morning they should be good to go!

Sorry you had such a hard time HTH!

Good luck!

A lot of things amount to trial and error. I think it rare when someone can make something perfectly, first time out.

These things take practice!!!

Don't get down on yourself...check out the gallery and maybe you will find something you can add to your cake, in time.

Sorry for the double post. Strange message when I hit send!

Well, if you want to give it another shot you could try a two-loop bow. I just did one on the last cake in my gallery. It's much easier and less time-consuming than a puff bow!, and it dried overnight. (I added a little gumtex to my MMF.) I cut those loops 2" by 7" then folded. The center piece was cut to about 2" by 4" or 5". That I didn't measure; just kind of winged it.

I formed the bow by wrapping each loop around a 3/4" dowel; then wrapped the center piece around them and let it dry all put together. If you want more height you can try stuffing the loops with cotton; although I tried this and had problems with the cotton sticking into the fondant! (synthetic "cotton" might work better)

One thing that does help me with my bows is my hand cranked pasta maker I bought at overstock.com. It was only $30. And you can get one at Michael's I believe; maybe for even less. This helps me get the thickness right and even on each loop; I used a #4 thickness on my puff bow but a #6 thickness (thicker) on my 2-loop bow. (But then I rolled my smocking rolling pin over it so made it a bit thinner.) The thinner you can get the better, more realistic the bow is going to look. Of course, with fondant you can't get TOO thin or it'll break.

BUT, if you don't want to go out and buy a pasta maker; have you tried using two wooden scewers to make sure you get an even thickness on your bow loops? If that's not thin enough, at least its a start; then thinning from there wouldn't be quite as hard.

Sorry you had such a bad time! I had ZERO luck with fondant bow-making, too. I just don't think it's the best medium to use. Just yesterday I made my first bow out of gumpaste. MUCH better! You can roll it thinner, and it dries very fast. You could still make your bow cake. Give it one more shot, using the lessons you learned about sizing, etc.. Don't bother drying the loops over a dowel. That was such a pain for me....I disfigured so many loops trying to scoot them into position on the dowel. Just lay them on their sides on a flat surface. They'll be fine, and the little bit of difference that creates in each loop makes it look more real. I found that the bow looked better with more rounded loops rather than loops that were kind of teardrop shaped. As for color...oddly enough mine was brown, too. I used Americolor Chocolate Brown, and it was a rich..well...chocolate brown. Lovely. I hope you live somewhere that you can get Americolor, if you don't already have it.

Don't give up. This is a never-ending learning experience!

And just a FYI, I followed TamiAz's instructions on measurements for the puff bow. Made 7 loops 6" long; 5 loops 5 1/2" long; and 3 loops 5" long. Total loops in my puff bow was 15! I counted because I was curious! So it was kinda like doing a rose put together in reverse (since my roses have 7 petals on bottom; then 5; then 3.

Hope this helps!

If worse comes to worse, I just noticed that Wilton sells a finished bow now with the cake supplies at Micheal's. It is white, but you can paint it with your food coloring. I thought it was expensive, but if you have a coupon, it might be OK. I know it's not the same, but I thought you might like to know.

Why don't you add some flair to the top of your cake with a modelled fondant figure of your dad? You could maybe even have one of his hands smashing a miniture bow or put some little modelled tools or something of his interests around him. That way the original box type cake could stay the same and you have personalised it just for him!

Thanks guys... I will see if we can give it one more go tonight.

For some odd reason I didn't get any notification about the above replies like I normally do so here I was thinking... not only had I made a dud bow but no one wanted to help ... I should have known better.

I will keep you posted with how we go.

For those that don't know, I am in Australia.

Karen,

I've sent you an email, with some suggestions. I wish I could fly one up to you overnight


Cheers,
Fran

Thank you so much fran for your help.

You saved the day as far as colour was concerned by suggesting using chocolate fondant.

i still had heaps of trouble with the bow as you will be able to tell. I think I need to watch someone make a bow then perhaps I will get it. Reading tutorials and emails is just not enough for me.

luckily the cake is for family only and immediate family at that. Here it is. Any suggestions and feedback welcomed.

I think it turned out great. It's very pretty, nice save!

Thanks for the vote of confidence but trust me the photo makes it look better than what it is.

It is still very very soft and you can see all the glue holding it together.

But I appreciate the kind words.

My eldest daughter topped it off by saying that it looked tooo girlie!

What is it with our daughters, Karen.

D'arcy has just started pointing out EVERY, tiny little flaw in my cakes too!

Maybe we should get them together and let them bag their mothers!

I don't think it looks girly by the way, I think it looks great, and yummy.


Cheers,
Fran

It doesn't look girly! It looks great Karen. Well done hun.

It turned out great! MUCH better than my first bow...lol. I didn't even take a pic of it!

Your cake looks wonderful and I am sure it will taste just as yummy! I hope my first bow will look nearly as good as yours ~ good save! I don't see the "girly" factor either...