I'm happy with my fondant skills for larger cakes, but continue to have some bottom-edge distortion problems on my 6" and smaller tiers. I'm rolling my fondant large and thick enough, and elevating the cake to allow the fondant to "pull-down" over the cake, but still can't seem to get it perfectly smooth. I love to give 6" layer "personal" cakes as gifts so improving my technique to achieve a really polished, professional result is very important to me.

I've found lots of posts mentioning that smaller cakes are more difficult to cover than larger cakes, but no discussion specifically focusing on the "how-to" for small cakes.

Does anyone have any special techniques or "secrets" to share for achieving perfection on small cakes? Thank you so very much for your help and never-ending inspiration!

I'm going to watch this to learn this myself!

Gosh. I have no issues covering a small cake. I would prefer them over larger cakes any day! You mention you think you roll the fondant to the right size, but am wondering if you use the formula of the height of the sides plus the width of the top to get your measure. So, if you have a four inch high by six inch cake, you would want to roll a fourteen inch circle -more or less... (4+4+6)

Strangely, I don't even elevate my cake smaller cake... I don't find I need to.

Other than that, I don't have any great suggestions for you. --Just keep practicing!

You've probably seen this a million times but its all I could think of that might help. Its just a preview tho.

I much rather fondant a larger cake than smaller...any day.
The only suggestion I have...is to try it without elevating it and pull (gently) out while you smooth down. I always work away from the cake. Like I reach across the top of the cake and work on the backside and then turn it. I do that for all my fondant cakes (any size) but, it is especially helpful to do it that way for me when I work on smaller cakes.
I also find that I prefer the fondant a bit thinner on the smaller cakes. Not so much that it looks different than the other tiers I'm working on.
Just keep practicing...we've all got our "thing" that hangs us up at times.

ps. I don't know why but whether I "elevate" depends on my mood...sometimes I do sometimes I don't...

I definitely have more of a problem covering the smaller cakes with fondant too. Thanks for the tips.

I'm thinking that I will try the next one WITHOUT elevating. Maybe because the diameter of the cake is smaller, there is more pull on the center of the fondant caused by the rest of the fondant. In most cases, we have an extra 8+ inches of diameter of fondnant added to cover the sides of the cake - no matter what the diameter of the cake. So the ratio of top fondant to additional fondant is much smaller for the smaller cakes. So, if the side fondant is unsupported during the process, we're going to see alot more "pull" than we do with the larger cakes. This may all be crazy, but I'm going to try this next time. I'll powder the counter around my cake board so that the fondant doesn't stick to the counter before I'm finished shaping the fondant to the cake.

Any opionions on this? Thanks so much for your discussion and thoughts!!

I've covered several small cakes with fondant.

1.) this cake has a 4" top tier

2.) these "blocks" are 1 1/2" x1 1/2" cubes covered in fondant, if that's not SMALL I don't know what is!! lol


In any case, the best advice I can give you is do it JUST like the big cakes but roll the fondant MUCH thinner!

I roll my fondant about 1/8" thick to 1/4" thick for large cakes and roll it MUCH thinner the smaller the cake is, when using thicker fondant it tends to bunch up at the bottoms of the small cakes.

Wow! Your blocks look great! I too have trouble covering smaller cakes in fondant. But these give me hope.

Ohhhh, your top tier and small blocks look SO nice :>) Thank you for your advise on thinner fondant. I will definitely do this next time. Is your 4" top tier a square? I've had much better luck covering small squares than small rounds.... maybe I should remember that when I'm planning a small cake!

Thank you!!

It is a square, but I have done rounds too........I actually find the rounds to be just as easy as the squares (or just as hard, depending on how you look at it LOL)

Anything smaller than a 4" cake I freeze it first. It helps to have the cake firmer, but you also have to work quickly before it gets sticky from the condensation. It will dry up once it sits for a bit though!