Dots and Daisies Cake

It's finished! I wouldn't call it a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm okay with it. I have worked with rolled fondant a little bit in the past. Mostly, I've used it like play-dough to create objects. On Lane's hunting cake, I made the hunter and deer out of fondant and rolled the fondant out to cut the "blobs" that made the camouflage. I also used it on Cohen's construction cake to make the banner that said "Happy Birthday, Cohen."

Today, I decided that I would try to create a "Dots & Daisies" cake. I envisioned it being covered in the rolled fondant. This was a completely new skill for me. I've heard that covering a cake in fondant can be quite difficult although those "Cake Divas" and "Ace of Cakes" folks make it look like no sweat. Being the overachiever that I am, I just couldn't imagine that I couldn't handle it --- for some reason I tend to think I can do a little of everything.

Covering the cake in the fondant wasn't the most difficult thing I've ever done, but I certainly didn't get it perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Of course, had my cake been perfect, I think it would have come out a little smoother. I would imagine that if I'd applied fondant 400 times I'd be a little better at it too! I knew I was going to be layering a lot over the fondant, so I shrugged it off and rocked on. Photo 1 is the cake after being covered with fondant.

Next stop, polka dots. Since my daisy was pink with some yellow accents around the center, I settled on yellow and pink dots. The fondant I purchased was white (you can buy it already colored, but primary colors are all I saw), so I chose to tint my own. I used the excess fondant that I trimmed off of the cake to tint for the yellow dots. I have both regular food coloring and gel icing color. I've heard it said that the gel is supposed to be preferable because it doesn't dilute the icing, but I don't notice much difference when coloring the fondant. In fact, since fondant dries and hardens quite quickly, the regular food coloring seems to give me a little more time to work with it. After I had the desired tint to my fondant, I rolled it out to make my polka dots.

Oh, I failed to mention earlier that I couldn't locate my rolling pin for this adventure. Covering the cake with fondant might have been a bit easier if I had been able to roll it out with a rolling pin rather than with a glass! Laugh, if you must, but as my friend Christina knows, I don't even own a mixer and once made a meringue with only a whisk!! Where there's a will, there's a way!

With the yellow fondant rolled out, I used a variety of round kitchen items to cut my circles (lids, cups, a straw -- stuff like that). I brushed each dot with water on the back side before applying to the white fondant so that they would adhere. Photo 2 is the cake after applying the yellow polka dots.

The only thing left to do was to repeat the whole tinting and dot-making process for the pink polkas. I finished out the cake with a border of yellow icing. Ta-da. There she is. Pictures 3 and 4 are the finished product. Hope she likes it!