Party Cake

Simple yet festive! One of the few cakes I've used fondant.

My beliefs with fondant are simple...
A cake is not only made to be beautiful, stunning and amazing it's true purpose is to taste delightful. If a cake doesn't taste wonderful I've failed. Fondant is not a palatable taste or texture. It looks amazingly pleasing to the eye, but disappoints the taste buds. For this reason I choose a small amount of imperfection to use butter-cream frosting instead. However, I've realized fondant does have a place in the details... some cakes demand it's use.

This cake that screams party is 4 layers of moist devil's food cake frosted in white butter-cream and very simple for anyone to recreate.

I prefer to purchase rather than make fondant on the rare occasion that I use. Fondant can be found just about anywhere now days - even on the cake making isle at Walmart! It comes white or in colors. I purchase white and use my food coloring to create the colors I need.

For this project I chose my colors, worked in the coloring by kneading the fondant until thoroughly incorporated. I dusted my counter with powdered sugar and used a rolling pin to roll the fondant to a 1/4" thickness.

I then used a straight edged ruler and a small pizza cutter to cut 1/2" strips from the fondant, cutting them all at different lengths.

I used 1/2" dowels and wrapped the fondant around them at an angle leaving a slight gap all of the way down. I laid them on a cookie sheet and allowed them to dry for two days until they were hard.

I ran a large bead of butter-cream frosting along the bottom of the cake and placed the fondant curls all along the edge. The top curls were a little more tricky. They didn't want to stand on their own. To remedy this problem I pushed toothpicks into the cake and placed the curls over them where ever necessary. Not every curl needs a toothpick so don't go overboard with them.

I added fondant circles made by rolling out the fondant and using a small round cutter. Couldn't have been more simple.

Simplistic and impressive... even a beginner can create this cake with little stress.