I'm Not Fond of Fondant

Ashley and Elysha's birthday party is coming up on Sunday.  I thought, since I am going to have a lot to do Saturday, that maybe I would make the cake a few days ahead and freeze it. 

It was a good idea. 

My plan was to make a beautiful fondant cake from scratch to show off my crafty-mom skills.  The only problem is, I don't really have those. 

First, I made the cake.  I forgot to adjust the recipe to low altitude and the center fell in.  I made a double layer cake.  As you can see, the center of the top layer is perfectly even with the edges of the bottom layer.  This is the point that I knew this cake would be for Christian.

When I pulled the cake out, I realized my heavily applied Pam wasn't enough to keep the cake from clinging to the pan.  After violently shaking the pan upside down, most of it finally came out.  Hence, the huge hole you can see in this picture. 

Well, I thought, I can just make the fondant and try again on the cake later. 

Another great idea. 

I decided I wanted to make buttercream fondant.  It would taste just like buttercream frosting, so I couldn't see any downside.  I mixed up all the ingredients except for the powdered sugar.  I added the powdered sugar a little at a time.  I was supposed to put 2 lbs of the sugar in, but my the time I got to about a half a pound, I figured it looked about right.  I know a lot about these things, you know.  I tried rolling it out, but it stuck to everything.  So I decided maybe I should put the remaining pound and a half of sugar in. (I now know you are supposed to roll it between two sheets of plastic) I scooped the fondant back into the bosh and added a few cups of sugar. 

After kneading that in, the fondant was so dry that it cracked every time I even looked at it.  I finally decided this would make a perfect topping to my holy cake.  Or maybe I should call it a crumb cake. 

But, something good did come from this!  I used a cookie cutter to make little letters for their (now normal frosted) cake.  I figured that would be a whole lot easier than trying to draw letters with icing. 

Because their names both have the same six letters, I just had to make two of everything, something I am pretty comfortable with.

I just hope the rest of the party plans work out a little more smoothly (no pun intended).

I also hope Christian likes dry fondant and sunken cake.