My Fifth Fondant Cake

I made this cake for some one's daughter's first birthday cupcake tower. 6 inch round vanilla cake with butter cream filling and fondant deco. This was the first time I tried letting my fondant sit on the side for a day and shaping it before drying so that it would dry that way. I was very pleased with the out come on the flowers and butterflies. For the butterflies I used a basic butterfly cookie cutter and then shaped it so that the wings were facing up. Then I let it sit for a day to dry and once it was hard I got a brush and dusted on a white pearl dust. Using the pearl dust was the first time I was using it and I liked how it came out. This cake was very easy to work with and I m not sure why. I mean the fondant went on the cake smoothly and the flowers along with the butterflies and lettering was very quick and not stressful. I enjoyed making this cake :-) Also I made about 30 cupcakes to go with the cake. I decided to do another attempt at my fat swirls for icing the cupcakes but it didn't hold it's shape. Though I kind of like the look it reminds me of some thing in the 50's just can't put my finger on it.

First Attempt At Cupcake Swirls

I decided to have fun with my son and make some cupcakes. I think being in a kitchen and making delicious treats is a great way of bonding with your kids. And what child doesn't like to feel independent like a grown up and at the end be rewarded with a sweet treat? So I just bought a set of 3 icing tips along with disposable pastry bags to make cupcake swirls. I already had some sprinkles stashed away somewhere in my pantry and just used those. The swirls made me smile but my goal is to make those nice fat swirls that keep its shape. Since we had about 24 cupcakes I messed with a few and made one covered in fondant and the other with a mini fondant figure.

My Fourth Fondant Cake

This is a 6 in round Red Velvet flavored cake with cream cheese filling. This was my first attempt in making a sugar figurine out of fondant. I wanted to use gum paste but didn't have the materials to make my own gum paste. Sure I could have gone to Wal-Mart and buy a small bag of already made gum paste but as a Mommy I like to save money. I mean when it comes to my children then spending money is no problem at all. But for other stuff that is not really a necessity I try to be wise on what I spend my money on. One thing I didn't like about making my figurine out of fondant is that it wouldn't hold it's shape, so I had to keep on fussing with it. If you look close enough his head isn't so perfectly round lol. The next time I make a figurine I will be sure to use gum paste and let my figurine sit on the side for a while to harden. Oh and one mistake I made on this cake is that the diamond patterns didn't fit evenly when both points met with each other. If that made sense? So now I know I should probably get the measurements of my cake and divide them equally so that the diamonds will fit evenly around the whole cake. I also made some cupcakes and my own cupcake liners. I was pretty pleased with the attempt of my fat icing swirls. I never went to school for any of this, it's typically out of fun.
(Notice a weight on the side of the dummy, the person I made this for loves to lift weights)

My Third Fondant Cake

This is a two tier round cake made with Strawberry flavored cake mix by, Pillsbury w/ Betty Croker's whipped icing. I found the brand Pillsbury to be a bit cheaper than Betty Crockers, but I don't think the Pillsbury mix is that great. I would prefer Betty Crocker, the moist mix. The whole cake is covered and decorated in fondant. I used the Wilton icing colors to color my fondant that darker blue and for the lighter blue I used regular food coloring. There was no special occasion as to why I backed this cake but simply because I wanted to give it another try at making a cake. I couldn't wait for the next birthday or occasion to come to make another cake, that's how excited I was about cake! I purchased a couple of basic shapes from a chef store and the cutters were made from Wilton. I got square and circle shapes along with a ribbon cutter/roller (by, Wilton) to create a bow as seen in the picture. I have been noticing that Wilton makes a lot of baking goods which is so exciting because they have a lot of great products for reasonable prices. Also what's great about Wilton is it's easier to find in stores than most brands that you would have to order online or buy through a specialty store.

My Second Fondant Cake

Here is the Birthday cake I mentioned that I wanted for my son's birthday but instead of paying a fortune for it, I made it all by myself. I priced around for already made fondant but the prices were 3x more than making marshmallow fondant. So I stuck with making the mm fondant and this time instead of using regular food coloring, I found out that using paste coloring or more concentrated colors worked best with coloring fondant and so I went with Wilton's Icing Colors. They are affordable and can be bought individually or as a set if you would like a variety of colors. I then went to Wal-Mart and invested in a few round pans ( one 6", two 9", and one 12". All are 2" deep.) This only cost me about $35.00 which was cheaper than buying the set they sell for $40.00, but if you like pans that are deeper then investing in the $40 Wilton round pan set is worth it because it is 3" deep, making it an inch deeper than the pans I bought. Another reason I wanted to go with the pans I went with is because it supplied for enough guest at the event, so I just bought what I needed at the time. I also got a wider roller to roll out my fondant and the ingredients required to make my cake. For this one I used Betty Crocker's vanilla, yellow and marble (vanilla w/ mocha swirls) cake mix to bake a cake. I also used Betty Crocker's butter cream icing for the filling and to help the fondant designs stick to the cake. I was trying my best to cut costs and save time. I m glad I went this route since it probably would have been a pain for me to make it out of scratch the day before the party and it turned out that when I decorated the cake it took me till 4 am to finish it! I started at 4:30 pm the day before so we are talking about 12 hours of time invested into baking and decorating the cake! OMG. This is a cowboy themed birthday cake with cow prints, cowboy hats and boots in black to look like the cow spots and blue to give it color.

It stands 3 tiers tall.
Top view.

My First Fondant Cake 12.29.2009

Never in my life did I think that I would have enjoyed baking and cake decorating. I mean I never even liked the taste of cake to begin with and I thought baking was only for Granny. But I thought wrong. For one of my son's birthday I was looking into buying a cake for his birthday party and the kind of cake I wanted wasn't your average half sheet size cake with icing decorations. I wanted a fondant cake that would feed about 100 guests and I wanted it to have cute designs. After calling and pricing around the cost of the cake I was very discouraged. I mean there was no where I was going to get a cake that I wanted less than $360.00! To me that was ridiculous. The all of a sudden a light bulb sparked in my head and I thought that maybe I should try and make a cake covered in fondant. I had no idea of where I was going to start, especially when I didn't have anything that said "baking material" written all over it. Okay okay maybe three things... A muffin pan, 9" round pan and a cookie sheet, I promise that's it! How lame huh? Anyways I decided to go online and look into making fondant from scratch and how to decorate a cake. Since I wanted to make everything as easy as possible and cut costs, I decided to use a cake mix on SALE and a 9" round pan that I found in my kitchen cabinet. Yes, I know a 9" round cake will not feed 100 guest but I wanted to do a Test Run, see if this was all worth the time, effort, and money. So I found a few videos on how to make fondant out of marshmallows and other ingredients that seemed familiar to me. I think this is the only reason why I chose to make MM fondant rather than making the actual fondant. I bought a set of regular food coloring, all the ingredients needed to make fondant and cake, and a rolling pin (to roll out my fondant). And tadaa here is my first fondant cake ladies and gentlemen! I mean give me a break I went in thinking that my cake would have came out worst than this and my husband encouraged me to make my son's birthday cake for the main event. So cross your fingers and hope that the next one comes out decent..... Or at least cheaper than $360.00
BTW I used Yellow Cake mix by, Betty Crocker and Cream Cheese frosting by, Betty Crocker. The Cake is Cowboy inspired and I just used what ever color I could find at the stores. Unfortunately red food coloring turns into a pink, as seen in this pic.The cut outs were made out of cookie cutters from Wilton's 101 cookie cutters. I used cowboy boots, hats, and stars.I used the #1 cookie cutter to cut out a 1 and used the cream cheese frosting as a glue to hold the #1 in place.As you can tell I didn't know that people cut there cake to make it straight at the top, it wasn't something I was thinking about at the moment. I was just determined in making a fondant cake.

Welcome!

Hi all!
So this is officially my very first blog on "Mommy's Sweet Life" and blog.
I been wanting to do this for a while but honestly never found the time to do so. Finally with the nagging in my head and the extra time I have on my hands I finally took the time to create this blog. I am excited to share with you all the wonderful adventures I personally experienced with cake baking, cake decorating and any thing related to being a mommy in a kitchen.
As an individual I am a Mommy and Wife to a beautiful family and enjoy exploring many things and making it my hobby. I enjoy photography, singing when no one is listening, trying to play a guitar, traveling, cooking different things, baking and decorating cakes. I told you I enjoy exploring many things, in fact I have so many interest I don't know which one I enjoy the best but instead take up the advice my husband told me, "Explore one interest at a time and at the end which ever one makes you happy stick to that one". So with that I am focusing on Cakes and anything that pertains to cooking and baking. We'll just see how long I stick to it!