First Time Cake Makers

I'm not exactly a stranger to cake making, but I did feel like a fish out of water when I was at the supply store today. Like I have previously mentioned, I have worked on cakes before, but never anything too large scale like a wedding cake. I decided to tackle my fears head on and go to the store without any lists or plan of action. I knew I needed fondant and some Styrofoam cake tiers, but that was all I really had in mind. $200.00 later I had quite a haul...

I picked up some white vanilla fondant (which wasn't enough to cover my cakes so I had to pop back to the store to get some more), white gum paste, brushes, a straight edge leveler, a holder for my peonies, peony cutters, a ball tool, floral wire, yellow ribbon and some cake dummies. I am pretty sure I bought out the whole store. 

This shopping trip taught me that whoever I buy my wedding cake from deserves every penny! The supplies alone to make a fake cake costs around $90.00 and that isn't even including all of the tools needed to make the actual cake. I suggest that if you are going to attempt to make your own fake cake, it's best to buy the proper tools and equipment. Although there are definitely some techniques out there that eliminate purchasing a whole plethora of tools, there are some things that you just can't skimp out on. It's very obvious when a cake is made with improper tools and if you're going to invest all of that time and effort into making a cake, it would be a shame if it didn't turn out quite right. 

As my cake journey continued, I felt nervous about turning my supplies into a work of art. I started with kneading the fondant (which was almost impossible to take out of the container for some reason!). I sprinkled my work surface with cornstarch as it has a nice slip and is inexpensive. Some prefer to use icing sugar, but I needed to preserve my icing sugar stash for my sugar cookies. Kneading the fondant was really easy, but rolling it out was a bit more challenging. Since I don't have a super large rolling pin, the sides of my rolling pin kept digging into the fondant. It was also difficult to make sure that all sides of the cake dummy would be covered.

I love the feeling of fondant, it feels so smooth and it was easy to lift off of the surface. I draped the fondant over my forearm and managed  to place it on my cake dummy. I then used my leveller to smooth everything into place (it got rid of the little indentations that my rolling pin kept making). This is the scariest moment of the whole fondant covering process. If you don't place it properly the first time, it can be a little bit difficult to go back and fix your mistake. 

After shaving off the excess fondant and adding some ribbon, the cake began looking like a cake!

I have finished covering and stacking all three cakes and I am now working on making my sugar peonies. I am a little bit frustrated as all of the gum paste peonies I have been looking at do not use the cutters that I have purchased. I will make a tutorial for these gum paste peonies in future for those of you who have purchased the same cutters as I have (a tutorial using these cutters literally does not exist on the Internet for some reason and if they do, I can't find it).

Can't wait to show all of you the finished product! In the mean time, I will continue posting process pictures and after the Cinderella Wedding Fair I promise I will start posting recipes again!

Beautiful Baking Sweeties