Sister's 17th Birthday

It’s been WAY over a month ago since I last posted something! It’s almost disgraceful. But rather than the usual bit of lazy I’ve actually been very busy. One of the first things I made after my last post of Pumpkin Soup was my sister’s 17th Birthday Cake (or is it 17th birthday birthday cake?). It was quite a challenge. So far I’ve always said I disliked making fondant cakes. Somehow I always felt they were very plain tasteless cakes with a far too sugary layer over it and way too many decorations to ever eat. Where was the actual food experience? Something to make your taste buds go wild? I took it back after making a good fondant cake myself. Well, admittedly the taste itself wasn’t spectacular. But making a fondant cake proved to be a lot of fun.

I can’t give you a recipe for this cake. As it is a vanilla madeira cake covered in buttercream icing with fondant over it. I have recipes of the buttercream icing here. I realized I haven’t posted any recipes of the madeira cake while I’ve made SO many in the meanwhile! I’ve had an entire phase of madeira cakes in all variations and I have so many lovely pictures, but appear to have been too busy to have posted any! The fondant I used was Satin Ice White Vanilla. The same one Cake Boss apparently uses. My sister had watched a few episodes of Cake Boss and really wanted a cake of her own.  I tried to make it more eccentric like they do in Cake Boss and wanted the cake to be able to turn -by motor- and have a melody play while doing so. I got quite far with the plans but the cake was simply too heavy for the little motors I could find so eventually I scratched that plan. 

I did try to make the rest of the cake according to my sisters preferences and colours. I made the cake pearl with pink and a silver glittery shine all over. The shine is a bit hard to see on the pictures, but it’s there. I also went with roses, since she really wanted flowers on her cake. In the end her cake looked a lot different than all the cakes she’d shown me on pictures. She said she loved it though. And I did too. Just like my mom, I think the cupcakes turned out a lot better. It took me two entire days making it, including cupcakes. From 9 in the morning till around 8 at night. I've never spent so much time making a cake. It was absolutely tiring, but well worth the experience!

Actually, just because I can’t give you a recipe, doesn’t mean I can’t in any way help in case you want to make a cake like this yourself. There’s a few things I learned while making this cake:

- If you leave fondant out in the air it will DRY OUT until it is very very hard. And that process actually starts while you’re still kneading!

- Also, if you leave the cake, with fondant, in the fridge or leave the little fondant flower between wet paper towels to counteract the previous point, the fondant will actually melt. Your flowers will be little dots of colourful goo and your cake will need to dry for quite a while before you can actually work with it. 

- Although you need only a little bit of buttercream to make the fondant stick to the cake and prevent crumbling, it tastes SO much nicer when there’s a lot of delicious buttercream in between!

- Think high! The layers of my cake should have been higher. I should have used two cakes for each layer and stacked them very high. It’s not that it was bad, it would’ve just been so much better and impressive if it was taller than about 15 cm/6 inch high. Also, don’t make the bottom layer part of the cake stand. Has anyone noticed my cake has 3 layers?

- Especially when it’s your first time: just enjoy making it. Don’t think too big and be proud of yourself afterwards!

I hope you guys enjoyed the pictures and the ranting! Please look forward to new recipes soon! I’ve got some nice new stuff coming up!