First Time Using Fondant

Decorating By Nazarine Updated 8 May 2011 , 10:56am by Nazarine

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Nazarine Posted 7 May 2011 , 11:31pm
post #1 of 13

My daughter wants one of those princess doll cakes for her 4th birthday. Her party is in 2 weeks so I bought the mold pan today, baked my cake and it's sitting there ready to decorate. But I have to wait until my 2 and 3 year olds go to bed to start it. This is my first time using royal icing, first time making a doll cake, first time covering a cake in fondant, first time making marshmallow fondant. Sooooooo, tonight will either be a disaster or a personal triumph. Hubby is working the night shift tonight so I have the house to myself and can relax and concentrate. I have a bottle of wine chilling in the fridge in case this all goes south. Worse case scenario will find me huddled on the couch in my sweatpants, ticked off, nursing a glass of wine and eating smashed cake. LOL! Wish me luck and any tips are welcome!
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Oh, and this isn't the cake for her birthday - this is my practice run!

12 replies
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cakesrock Posted 8 May 2011 , 12:53am
post #2 of 13

Well, you are very ambitious! icon_eek.gif Good luck! thumbs_up.gif Have you considered using BC just for this one? Then practicing on something easier to work on your fondant skills for a bit, then trying this with fondant down the road? Just my opinion...
For my first time covering a cake in fondant, I used store bought stuff. It's tough enough to get the hang of using fondant, doing the smoothing of the crumb coat AND using your own MMF on top of that. Hmmm.... where do I start?
Just don't heat your marshmallows too much, follow Rhonda's ultimate MMF recipe (in recipes) and watch lots of tutorials on how to put it on! I would also suggest that you heat your spatula (and dry it off) repeatedly to get your crumb coat smooth. And use your roller to transfer the MMF to the cake.
I have made 2 doll cakes and they are a bit harder than they look, in my opinion...
Are you planning on making the dress top? Watch a tutorial..
What are you using the RI for?
Enjoy the wine- always a good pairing with cake decorating icon_biggrin.gif ! (in my opinion) I'd love to hear how it went....

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Nazarine Posted 8 May 2011 , 1:03am
post #3 of 13

Thanks! I totally considered the BC for this cake but wanted to try fondant. If it goes horribly wrong, I'm pretty confident I can pull of a BC version. But I'd still do a practice run before the party. I am doing the bodice of the dress and that part is intimidating me the most so great tip of finding some videos of it! The royal icing is for some small flowers. I'm using the Classic Wonder Mold and the directions for the dress said royal icing flowers. I figure that I've never used RI before but it can't be all that different than BC in creating the flowers, etc (I hope). Thought it couldn't hurt to have some on hand in case I ran into trouble with the fondant.

Will look into the recipe and the videos for sure. Thank you so much for the help and I promise to post a pic when I'm done!

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Nazarine Posted 8 May 2011 , 1:06am
post #4 of 13

Oh, about the MMF...I had no plans to make MMF for this cake but hubby and my daughter thought the Wilton store bought one tasted "icky". I was really gunning for store bought. If this doesn't work, I read that you can flavor the store bought fondant with vanilla or almond. Maybe that would go over better?

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DeezTreatz Posted 8 May 2011 , 1:08am
post #5 of 13

LoL!!!!
I've never made fondant - I always buy it.. but I wish you the best!
So many things to go over... icon_razz.gif I would go on youtube and look up

How to: cover a cake in fondant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bLp3B-mFus&feature=related

How to: make a doll cake
http://www.howdini.com/howdini-video-7075975.html

How to: make royal icing
How to: decorate with royal icing

It's all there and will help very much!

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cakesrock Posted 8 May 2011 , 1:09am
post #6 of 13

I prefer to use fondant flowers. RI is a pain to me and I only use it if it's the best thing to use. And why make it if you already have fondant? I bought one of these (among many other tools) for flowers:
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=flower+ejecter+wilton&hl=en&rlz=1W1SNYX&prmd=ivns&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&wrapid=tlif130481676367810&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=4615385491285911187&sa=X&ei=iOzFTdefGcLm0gGUo6CyCA&ved=0CF8Q8wIwAA#
Again... good luck!

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DeezTreatz Posted 8 May 2011 , 1:11am
post #7 of 13

The Wilton fondant doesn't taste very good icon_razz.gif

Try "Virign Ice" - Canada
Satin Ice
Fondx
etc... icon_smile.gif

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jules5000 Posted 8 May 2011 , 1:26am
post #8 of 13

Long before I had the opportunity to take classes from Wilton I did two girl doll cakes for my daughters' birthdays and they were just time consuming, but I did them in buttercream stars and put in my own designs as I was doing the stars. I thought they looked pretty good.

I have made the mmf fondant on here and it turned out great the first time and the next two times I do not know what happened, but they were not easy to work with. I have seen and printed off a copy of a recipe that claims it is new and improved or improved MMF. I have not had a chance to make it yet, but you might try that instead of just MMF. It tasted ok, it was just hard to work with and you can not have any humidity when you are working with it or you will probably end up drinking the whole bottle of wine when you are done trying to work with it. LOL!! you are smart to be doing a test run with all of these firsts. Good luck and I too would love to hear how it went or see a picture and hear how it went.

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Nazarine Posted 8 May 2011 , 3:19am
post #9 of 13

Well, I just told my hubby to use his dinner break to go buy me some rolled fondant. I will try the MMF but I've spent the last few hours reading horror stories about it not being the easiest thing in the world to work with, especially if you aren't letting it sit overnight. Yes, no one in this house likes the taste of the Wilton stuff, but I will use it for tonight and try to find that Satin Ice that was recommended. I haven't seen it anywhere so I might have to order it online. The Michael's sells Wilton and Duff brand. I might be using the Duff brand later on for my son's cake since he wants Lightning McQueen and Duff makes a bucket of red buttercream fondant. That will be another post later on this week since they are having a double birthday party. His cake looks amazing...in my head. Let's see what reality brings.

So far, so good though. The cake is in the fridge with a buttercream layer on it now. That part wasn't too hard. I will smooth it a bit more when it sets but nothing broke off or anything. Little victories. Baby steps. Yup...That's me. LOL!
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NanaSandy Posted 8 May 2011 , 3:40am
post #10 of 13

You will do fine...and as you said, if all else fails, you have that bottle of wine chilling. icon_rolleyes.gif
I like the Satin Ice and the Wilton fondant. I actually mix the 2 of them together. It gives you a better taste and makes the Wilton more pliable.
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Good luck and don't stress....remember it is just cake! Have fun and enjoy your decorating and learning new techniques!

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mommakristin Posted 8 May 2011 , 4:14am
post #11 of 13

A quick tip for you if you use the Wilton fondant..
When I first started working with fondant I was using the store bought.. I would flavor it with vanilla extract and it actually made the taste better. S you might try that to at least make the fondant taste better.
I love my MMF.. I did have issues when I first started using it but I wasn't using enough powdered sugar in it. But once I got that down I never had a problem with it!!

good luck with your cake!!

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Nazarine Posted 8 May 2011 , 10:51am
post #12 of 13

Took me all night but I am finally finished. I would up making 400 RI flowers and used only about 300. But it was my first time and I had no clue how many would break, etc. VERY happy with the results and I'll try to post a picture here. The fondant part was easy. I found the RI flowers the hardest and will avoid them at all cost in the future. icon_wink.gif Also, I ran into trouble with coloring the BC. The fondant and RI came out pretty close but the BC just turned a weird shade of blue. So, I put white dots on the flowers instead of purple and used white BC for the bottom garland and just clustered the flowers close together. I don't think it turned out all that bad. It looks kind of blue in the picture but it's purple.

Thank you for all the helpful advice! I appreciate it! I couldn't have done my first fondant cake without you guys!

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Nazarine Posted 8 May 2011 , 10:56am
post #13 of 13

Not sure if you can post a picture in the thread but I uploaded it to My Photos.

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