Fondant Roses

Well, last night was my last cake class. Yes, I know, sadness! However, in a way I'm a little happy too. I love doing cakes, but my schedule has been so hectic lately. I need to begin packing my apartment up this week/weekend because my lease ends next Wednesday. I also want more free time to be able to spend with my friends and family, especially before I make the big move to San Diego.

Luckily, I'll be taking tomorrow off from work in order to begin packing and also wrap up on my final cake. I'm taking my cake with me to French Lick to celebrate my friend Randy's daughter's birthday. I hope Jill likes the cake! That also means you'll have to stay tuned to see pictures of the final product.

At this point, all I need to do is stack the top tier onto the bottom one and put on the fondant roses. Below I included some pictures of the work that goes into making fondant roses. Fondant is similar to working with PlayDough except that it's sweet (not salty) if you decide you want to eat it. A lot of people don't like the taste of fondant, but it doesn't bother me. Then again I'll eat anything w/ sugar in it :)

The English actually were the first ones to use fondant because they would put so much liquor in their cakes, they needed something to hold it all together with. They, however, were smart enough to know it was just for looks and peeled the fondant off to the side when it was time to eat the cake. Americans, well... we'll eat anything! We're firm believers of never leaving anything to waste.

In the most basic description, you roll out the fondant and use cookie cutters to carve out your shapes. I won't get into all the details of how to make a flower because there's so many steps. I will say, however, that I much prefer the look of the fondant rose to the buttercream rose. It's just so much easier to work with and in my opinion looks so much better too, but I'll let you be the judge.

I hope you all have a fantastic 4th of July! I know I will!