How On Earth To Get Fondant On A Tall, Skinny Cake?
Decorating By ceshell Updated 11 Aug 2007 , 5:31pm by ceshell
So, although my Ratatouille/stockpot cake disaster is thankfully behind me, I would very much like to learn from my mistakes. I am assuming that the main reason my fondant fell off is that it was not properly placed on the cake, and not that a tall+skinny cake can't support the weight of that much vertical fondant??
The cake was about 10" tall but only 6" around. I first tried to wrap fondant just around the outside (think: chocolate collar) but it was too hard to wrangle, even with a flexible mat for support (just slips off the mat). I've since read a post suggesting a method involving stacking and freezing your cake and then rolling the cake up in the fondant, and blending the seams together. That sounds scary!
The method I eventually used involved rolling out a massive circle of fondant (height+height+diameter) and attempting to just cover the cake the way you would any normal height cake. This resulted in way too much fondant collecting at the back as it was affixed around the cake (try to cover a can of coke with a napkin). So of course I had to trim it all in the back and ended up with a seam anyway. [In my case, the seam didn't even meet so I think that's where the integrity of the wrap failed...it just peeled right back off the bc...perhaps if the fondant was overlaid onto itself it would have held itself together?]
Is there a special technique to getting fondant neatly onto a tall+skinny cake? I just can't get my head around it.
Bump 
I'ver never covered a 10" tall one in fondant... great question!
If you are worried about covering the whole cake in fondant by using the regular method of covering a fondant cake, then may I suggest the following: Rather than trying to use your silpat, once you have rolled out your fondant and cut it to the specifications to wrap around your cake, roll it around your rolling pin and roll around the cake or just roll up into a very loose log and roll around your cake adding pressure for it to stick as you go. I would also suggest letting a small lip go over the top of your cake so that it prevents slippage on the side walls of your cake.
Good luck for next time. 
Was your fondant sure thick. I think the thicker you have it the more likely it will fall. I have had it happen to me also when I haven't put it on the normally. I was so mad I had to rush out and get a cake from the supermarket and decorate that. I think it was too thick.
Thanks Liz! The regular method (if it worked) would also get you a nicely covered top but I just don't see how to overcome the excess fondant. Perhaps the method you suggest is really the only way to accomplish this challenge, then you add a disc on top w/a border or something. I may just have to practice on some coffee cans. I hate that the fondant beat me 
.
Tellis12 you are too kind, but if you are looking at the cake in my gallery, that one the BEFORE picture. The after pic can only be found in the cake disasters forum, and it looks "passable" although I think the pot looks like a giant cylindrical brownie 
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For your type of cake I would have done the fondant like they did the flower pot in this tutorial here on CC. Check out how she did it. Pretty much she turned the cake upside down so you don't have the fondant bunch on the bottom of your cake.
HTH next time
http://www.cakecentral.com/article46-Step-By-Step-3D-Cake-Sculpting-Baby-in-a-Flower-Pot.html
If you cover a tall, skinny cake with one piece of fondant draped over the top, you really do risk the fondant collapsing the the cake--just too much downward pressure.
Did your 10 inch cake have at least 2 cakeboards at the 4" and 8" level with dowels under each board? If not, it really didn't have a chance.
The suggestion to roll a tall skinny cake in the fondant and then blend the seam (with crisco, royal, or fondant thinned to piping consistency) is an excellent way to overcome this problem--but, such a tall thin cake should still have the internal support of boards and dowels. If you roll the cake in the fondant, you actually strengthen the sides rather than creating pressure from the top. I've done castle turrets this way and not had a problem.
Hope things turn out better the next time.
HTH
Rae
Thanks, Joanne, but don't shortchange yourself--you do great work! I'm looking forward to seeing you, too. We're gonna' have a great adventure!
Rae
Thanks everyone for your excellent help. Rae, I did indeed have internal support and dowels but only as a "two tier" cake, not three as you suggest so I will certainly bear that in mind. However, the cake itself did not collapse; it was only the fondant that peeled off the cake and was left in a puddle, though it was starting to sag and bulge right away. It seemed like the downward pull of the fondant just ripped it from its moorings (i.e. the top of the cake, which it was draped over) and peeled right down off the side in one piece (beginning at my faulty seam in the back--quite possibly my fatal mistake) - I just don't see how you can avoid that downward pull?
I had a girlfriend who could have sworn she'd once seen fondant like this "pinned" into place- ever heard of that technique??
I looked at your photos and I'm thinking that it looks like a lovely moist cake (not a rather sturdy, dry-ish pound cake) and that there was icing added on top of the fondant for the "soup"?
My amateurish guess is that perhaps the "soup" combined with the
"glue" (?water or piping gel?) used to adhere the lip on the pot softened the edge of the fondant (especially where it met the seam) and that gravity took over from there...... 
I don't know about pinning fondant on a tall cylinder. You actually risk the fondant tearing at the pin(s). I suppose if you did it at small, regular intervals, it would work best.
Other than wrapping the cylinder in fondant and blending the seam, the only other suggestion I have is to use a thin coating of piping gel over the buttercream in order to increase adhesion.
Rae
Thanks again Rae, you're awesome. The soup is just fondant (the top of the wrap) with a tiny tube of decorating gel and also a few tbsp of white icing mixed in to make it opaque..not that much but good point: icing on top of fondant=disintegrating fondant. I think you have also a terrific point about the lip of the pot itself compromising the fondant layer underneath. That and my bad seam = a cake disaster trifecta.
I really appreciate everyone's input. Time to start practicing!
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