Shopping Bag Cake

Stay tune for how I made this cake.

Roooooaaaarrrrr!

I was asked to make a birthday cake that represented a friend's astrological sign.  I decided to make it a sculptured cake.  This was just a practice cake before the actually cake.  When I am making a new cake I always like to do a practice cake, just in case a disaster happens.   I ended up giving the practice cake away to my sister. She was pretty happy!  I am probably to blame for the extra pounds she has gained.  Sorry sis :o).

Anyway, can you guess what my friend's astrological sign is??

Lion Cake

Vanilla Butter Cake covered in marshmallow fondant.

Vanilla buttercream filling and Chocolate Ganache filling.

Rice Krispy Treats were used for its head and feet.

The mane was chocolate fondant.

The most interesting thing about this cake is that I made my own marshmallow fondant for the first time.  It was delicious but boy was it messy to make.

So this is how I went about the marshmallow fondant...

I took a bag of 16 oz. marshmallows and melted them in the microwave.

This was the second batch of marshmallows I melted.
I made two batches of fondant

The melted marshmallows.

If you don't know already, when you melt marshmallows it becomes a gluey mess!  While the marshmallows melted, I placed powered sugar in a bowl and made a little well for the melted marshmallows.

After I poured in the melted marshmallows, I began to knead the mixture.

As I kneaded the fondant, I slowly added more powdered sugar.  The more sugar I added, the less sticky the fondant.

Eventually the fondant took a kinda pizza dough consistency.  Here is the finish product...

This is about 5 lbs of fondant.

To color the fondant, I had to break it up in 2 equal parts.  Its a little stiffer than regular fondant but nuke it for a couple of seconds helps to soften it.  Once colored, I covered the cake.  It was a lot easier to work with than regular fondant but it doesn't set as quickly.  Sometimes you need a quick setting fondant.  The accents I used on the lion were made out of regular sugar fondant.

There was some design issues that I new I would have to change when I made the actually cake.  These are the things I would change...

The nose had curve on the top that I would definitely take out.

Also, the mane went around the ear and not the face.  I would also like to make the mane more dramatic.

In the end, it was super cute but unfortunately the cake design seemed  more for a child than a 32 year old woman.  So I've changed the design and theme for the birthday cake.  Stay tune next week to see the final cake.