How to Add and Decorate a Fondant Cake

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Video Transcript

[Music playing]

Gwen Schoen: Hi I am Gwen Schoen food writer for The Sacramento Bee and today in the kitchen Belinda Gregor from Ettores' welcome.

Belinda Gregor: Thank you.

Gwen Schoen: She is going to show us how to do something I have never done before and that is frosty cake with fondant frosting or coated cake with fondant frosting.

Belinda Gregor: Cover a cake with fondant frosting.

Gwen Schoen: And that is the type of frosting that you frequently see on wedding cakes.

Belinda Gregor: Yes. Wedding cakes are a lot of the specialty cakes that we carry at Ettore's, our time to be covered with this.

Gwen Schoen: And you can buy fondant at a cake decorating shop?

Belinda Gregor: Yes you can a lot of brands out there, were ones available at Michaels and then there is also things like sat and nice and the other use to quite are few different varieties to choose from so if you try one and you that you do not like the taste of it, you can always try another brand or if your order in advance you can get fondant to Ettore's as well.

Gwen Schoen: Great. We will take about a pound of fondant to cover like nine inch layer cake?

Belinda Gregor: I am just using a bit more fondant in that way I can have plenty to cut off so I do not come up too short. Because sometimes it is harder to work with less fondant than it is to work with. You can always just cut off and then need again like what I am doing right now and then just put it right back in your bucket air tight container.

Gwen Schoen: So you are knitting it like a bread dough and your are using cornstarch instead of flour.

Belinda Gregor: Yes. Cornstarch is going to keep it dry and up here you can get pretty humid so that kind to help to keep it from sticking to the board as well with the rolling pin. If you find that fondant that you are working with is too dry and it is cracking just need a little bit of Crisco into that.

Gwen Schoen: Oh great. Okay.

Belinda Gregor: Rolling pin will start rolling it out. You just kind to want to go from the center out and rotate it. Now you kind to evenly roll it from there and if you have a little hard bit in there you can just flip that right out, set that aside and then just start rolling and that will all kind of level it self out there. You just keep rolling and turning and you are going to take it down to that a quarter about eight of an inch. Somewhere within that depending on -- if your cake is a little bumpy and you want to hide some imperfections, you can go a little bit thicker or you can go a little bit thinner if you have a pretty smooth well set cake ready to go for you.

Gwen Schoen: Now you want a circumference that will go across the top of the cake and down both sides.

Belinda Gregor: And here I have got a little bubble that starting to form underneath the fondant. You probably cannot see it on camera but when you are working at home you will be able to see a little unevenness and you can feel it right in there. So, instead of being smooth like it is over here. Right now it is --

Gwen Schoen: Like play dough.

Belinda Gregor: Yes. It is a lot of consistency toward the play dough tech nature. You just going to slide it in an angle and go right over and it is going to pop all your little bubbles there to keep you surface nice and perfectly smooth.

Gwen Schoen: So now how thick is this, about an eight of an inch?

Belinda Gregor: This is probably two quarter -- between a quarter underneath them.

Gwen Schoen: The cake is already been frosted?

Belinda Gregor: Yes. We have already put the base cut out of the butter cream on this so it is ready to go.

Gwen Schoen: And is it chilled?

Belinda Gregor: Yes. It has been chilled because you do not want to try to put fondant on top of soft butter cream. In most part you just take it up and toss it down like you just slide it over while doing that and then you want to take a paddle, you can just pick up with any little supply store and just go around the top first making sure that it is nice and smooth. If you got a few air bubbles just work them lightly out to the sides and