Fondant Cake

Fondant is like play dough but it's edible and for cake. It's frosting! Ok it doesn't taste all that great but it's fun to cake decorate with. In our church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) we have an organization just for adult women called Relief Society. It was founded in March of 1842. So in March we had a birthday party for the Relief Society in our local congregations. We had some really good speakers and lots and lots of cake. And of course I volunteered to make a cake because I'm crazy.

Ok now for the cake. I bought some already made fondant at Wal-Mart. It was pretty inexpensive and a time saver. Plus it was dyed as well. First make the cakes (no brainer right?) Now this is called dirty frosting. Just frost the cake. No need to do it nicely, this is what will hold the fondant to the cake.

Roll out the fondant evenly and not too thin. It should be about 1/4" or less but make sure you roll the fondant out the same every time. Once you've rolled it out, you can put the whole thing on the the cake by transferring it with a rolling pin. I did checkers so I used a small tupperware container and cut out rectangles. I then cut the rectangles in half. Cookie cutters come in handy here but I don't have any at school hence the tupperware.

After cutting out all the squares, start in the middle of the cake and lay out the fondant pieces. Continue covering the whole cake.

When you get to the edges, cut off the excess before you apply the pieces to the cake. Since this was a round cake I held the piece up to the spot where it was supposed to go and kind of eyed how much I should cut off.

I left some pieces rectangular for the side of the cake. I had to cut off a little bit to be the right height but all worked out well. The pattern didn't go all the way around so that became the back of the cake!

Next I made an R and an S out of the extra fondant I had and stuck those on top with a little bit of water. When attaching fondant to fondant, water is an excellent glue.

Use a sharper knife to get through the fondant when cutting the cake. And now it's all ready to eat.
(If you want to make fondant Click Here to see the last time I made it!)

Mini envelopes with windows

As Jasmine told you, we tried our hand at gum paste a couple nights ago. You may notice that my post is not labeled gum paste. My rose  didn't turn out so well. I think the class will be fun, and I will get to add gum paste and fondant to my cake decorating skills.

So.... instead I am going to share a few ideas about mini envelopes with cut out windows. I have 2 templates for making small to medium envelopes. I happened to get it from a home sales stamp company, but I am sure you can get one from other sources. If you can't find a template, find some envelopes that you like and take them apart. Create your own template.

I traced my pattern on to the back of the paper I selected for my first mini envelope. I chose a medium blue paper with snowflakes on it.  Make sure to press hard with your pen or pencil when you are marking lines for folding. This will make your edges sharper. I like to use a straight edge just to make sure they are straight. I also cut out a rectangle in plain white for the card inside the envelope. Then I used a snowflake punch on the front of the envelope. I saved the snowflake and glued it on the card. I turned it so that the snowflake does not show through the window when sealed. To glue the flaps down, I use either a glue stick or double sided tape. I punched another snowflake from a shiny gold fold adhesive paper. I used this to seal the envelope shut.

Envelope two has a photo showing through the window. This would be great to use for a child's thank you notes. You could snap photos of the gifts and have it show in the window.

Finally, I made a third envelope with a pumpkin cutout. I glued a Halloween paper on the back of the cutout.

For the second two, I actually traced tiny cookie cutters and then cut them by hand.

There are many other ways you can use mini envelopes. I made a bunch of them without the top flap and put word sorting activities in them for school. The students enjoyed pulling the words out and using the words.

Gum Paste

The mom and I have wanted to do a cake decorating class offered at Michaels for the longest time. It just hasn't really worked out with me away from home or mom working or whatever. Maybe it'll work out for us to do a class eventually but until then we'll just have to try some stuff out on our own. That's exactly what we did with gum paste. We bought a "just add water" tub of make your own gum paste. We found out it would've been far easier to buy the ready to use gum paste. We peeked at some books at Michaels and saw you can make Callalillies with a heart cookie cutter.

To make a Callalily, cut out a heart. Then, lightly flatten the edge of the point of the heart to give it a more realistic look. You're supposed to do this with some fancy tool and on top of a sponge. Well I didn't have that fancy tool. Instead I used a 1/4 tsp measuring spoon to improvise. I learned quickly don't press too hard! Next I overlapped the heart around, overlapping the curved edges. I made a cone for the flower to dry out of some tin foil and called it good.

To make the center, I mixed in some yellow food dye and rolled it. We had some edible gold flakes so I tried rolling the center in some. They didn't really stick all that well. I stuck some wire in the bottom of the center and hung it upside down on a basket handle to let it dry over night. After letting both the center and the flower dry over night, I put the center and wire through the flower. I don't really know how to make the center stick to the flower though. You can cover the wire with floral tape to make the wire stay somewhat.

Then I decided to try and do something for fun. I rolled some yellow, red, blue and brown. I made a yellow brick road with a toothpick making a light impression on the gum paste. then I made 2 blobs that looked like shoes and made the heel separately to attach after they had dried a little bit. Then I made a blue blob and covered it with brown and molded it into a cube to make a basket. I ended up accidentally breaking the handle so I made another one with white since I ran out of brown. Then I put the shoes and basket on the yellow brick road and called it good.