Fun with Fondant

So in my last cake decorating class we learned how to cover a cake with fondant. Fondant cakes are something that I've sort of turned my nose up at in the past. I'm not really sure why. I think part of it has to do with the fact that most 'kid' cakes I've seen with fondant have been way overdone. Plus I was never sure about how good it would taste.

Well, for my class I ended up buying a 50 lb. tub of Satin Ice Vanilla Fondant. Satin Ice is the top fondant sold today as far as taste and workability go. From what I've heard anyway. It is definitely better tasting and easier to work with than the Wilton fondant. Plus less expensive when you buy it in bulk! 

This past Saturday was Alyssa's birthday. Alyssa is my friend Shelly's daughter. She saw the fondant cake I did for my class and really liked it. Her party was island themed and she requested a 'Nim's Island' cake. Now, go do a search for Nim's Island birthday party and see what you come up with. Absolutely nothing. At least when I looked! So the cake I made came out of the imaginations of me, Shelly and Alyssa. 

This is what we came up with:

I was really pleased with how the cake turned out. All the moms said it tasted great. I have a recipe for marshmallow fondant that I'm going to try out because even though the Satin Ice is good and less expensive than Wilton, it's still a pretty penny! And marshmallow will be much less expensive in the long run. And may even taste better!

More Birthday Stuff

A circuit that didn't make it onto the cake.


The birthday boy patiently waiting to open his presents and eat cake.


For Christmas Sean had asked for a hymnal. Mom and dad got him one and promised to have his name engraved on it. Well, for his birthday he got a brand new one with his name on the front. He was so excited!


Here he is looking at his hymnal.

Sean's Birthday...Number 7!!!

Based on what we were giving Sean for his birthday, we decided on a circuit board cake. These are the 'circuits' I made (with some assistance from the kids and Damian). I bought an insane amount of candy! The bases are graham crackers and the green, blue and white frosting is royal icing.

This is the cake pre-decorations. The original plan was for it to be black. I started with a dark chocolate frosting and added black coloring. I stopped when my arm was too tired of mixing! (in my defense it was getting close to midnight!)


This is the cake with all the circuits on board. The 'Happy Birthday' is supposed to be an LCD screen.


The Charleston Chews in the middle of all these circuits have Sean's birthday and year. We started with 2002, the year he was born, and put it on the circuit on top of the cake. then for each of his 7 years there's a circuit on the side of the cake. These circuits are all connected to a candle on the top.

Monkey Cake

Our friend who moved to California had a birthday on March 1st. A couple of weeks before, I was making banana bread and he hinted that he would like so. So I decided to make him some banana bread and send it to him for his birthday.

When I told Damian, he said I should do more than just send banana bread, so I figured I would throw some cookies in with it. Well, when Sean got wind of this, he said I should make the monkey cake! That's because the cake is a banana cake. So Sean figured we could cover all the bases with a monkey cake (he had also decided he wanted this cake for his birthday party).

So I decided to do it. I won't go into all the details, but I did overnight FedEx this cake to California. There were some chocolate chip cookies thrown in as well (and some of them were even sandwiched with frosting in the middle!). Dave was very surprised and said everything got there perfect! I wish I had asked him to take some pictures when he took it out of the box. Oh well.

Cake Decorating

This was my final cake from Course 2. I made all those flowers you see. The pansies are my favorites (they're the purple and yellow ones).


The basket weave pattern was also pretty cool. It turned out to be much easier than I thought it would be.


I think this is a pretty cool picture of one of my roses. The roses are another example of something that I thought would be really difficult to do and they turned out to be pretty simple once I learned how.

Strong Man

He's apparently also He-Man! Connor just asked me for some milk so I opened the refrigerator to get the milk out. I turned around to grab his cup and when I looked back Connor had an unopened gallon of milk in his hands! He didn't even drop it. Maybe bc I got to him before he had a chance! But he was certainly trying to do it himself.

Connor's Watching...

Well, if I ever had any doubt about Connor paying attention to everything I do, it was thrown out this morning! Over the weekend Connor had a low grade fever. I use a butt thermometer when I check his fever and I always put some Vaseline on the tip before inserting (I'm just that kind of mom!).

Anyway, just now I went into the kid's bathroom to give the boys a bath. Apparently I left the little jar of Vaseline on the counter over the weekend bc there it was with the thermometer plunged into it. Fortunately I don't think the thermometer is damaged at all. I was able to wipe all the Vaseline off of it.

I suppose I should have known since Connor watches Sean so closely and does everything he does. I just hadn't had him copy me on something like this before!