Making a Birthday Cake with Fondant

Every year I look forward to making birthday cakes for my kids. It’s always a lot of work, but it’s fun too. This year my daughter wanted a kitten party. I LOVE this about my daughter. While other girls her age are having a Justin Bieber party, Kaitlyn wants kittens.

*contented sigh*

So, Kaitlyn and I went looking for kitten cakes online. And the one she wanted was really cute, but it was made with fondant icing. I’d never tried that before, and I don’t live in a place where I can run over to Michael’s and pick up a few packs of fondant. But there’s always the internet and YouTube. I found some recipes (Marshmallow Fondant Recipe and Marshmallow Fondant) and a video (How to make a ball of yarn cake) to give me some help.

Here was our goal:

Here’s how I did it:

The night before, I baked my cakes so I could freeze them overnight. I baked two half cake mixes in a pyrex bowl to get my ball cake. And I added a package of pudding to the cake mix to make it dense so that the cake wouldn’t be crumbly. Here is the link to that recipe.

 

The next morning, I used this recipe for Marshmallow Fondant and set out all my ingredients ahead of time. 

 

I put all my marshmallows in a big microwavable bowl and zapped them for about a minute. Then I stirred them up till they were gooey.

 

I added my vanilla, stirred that in, then added my water and stirred until creamy.

   

 

Then I started adding the sugar a little at a time. The mix got really gooey. 

   

 

When I had all the sugar mixed in but the last cup, I butter up my hands and started kneading it in. I thought it was still way too sticky, so I ended up adding more sugar than the recipe called for. Don’t know if I should have done this or not… But in the end, I got it to a bread dough consistency.

        

 

Then I divided the fondant into three parts. I set aside a little bit of white for the cat’s eyes and mouth, some to make orange for the cat’s body, since Kaitlyn wanted an orange cat, and the rest to dye pink. I covered each bit of fondant in cling wrap so that it wouldn’t get hard when left out to the air. Then I added a few drops of food coloring and kneaded it in, trying not to actually touch the food coloring until it was mixed well. Didn’t always work…

 

Once I had my colors, I set the orange aside (wrapped in cling wrap to keep it soft) and I rolled the pink out on the table. Now, the really cool guy on the YouTube video made strings with his cookie press. I tried this and it did not work! (I was very depressed.) Perhaps it was due to the fact that I added so much extra sugar, because my fondant was too thick to come out the holes of the cookie press. *sigh* So I had to cheat. Thankfully, this was not Ace of Cakes, and my daughter did not notice anything different about my cake and the picture we started with. So I rolled it out on the table with big plans to cheat.

I rolled it into as flat of circle as I could and covered the ball of cake. It was a little lumpy and I had WAY TOO MUCH fondant, so I rolled out another layer and covered the whole cake again.

Now it was time to cheat. Using a butter knife, I drew yarn lines onto the cake. This did not make me happy. I like things to turn out perfectly. But I didn’t have a choice. So I carved my ball of yarn, then used the orange and white fondant to make a kitten. It was like playing with playdough. I used the white to make a bit of green for my cat eyes, and melted a chocolate chip to get pupils. Then I used my hands to roll out a bunch of yarn to tangle around my kitten. I also spelled out Kaitlyn’s name in yarn, though it was hard to see on the wrapping paper board.

    

Kaitlyn didn’t care. She loved it. And it tasted pretty good too, though the fondant wasn’t very good the second day. Not surprisingly, everyone wanted a piece of that poor kitten’s head. You can see what the cake looked like after the party.

     

How about you? Ever made a fancy birthday cake? Ever tried fondant? Leave a comment and let me know. Thanks!