2D 3
Killing Time
by Erin Futrell · submitted Jul 25, 2012 · 2012 contest
1 / 17
Description
I love baking cakes and a few years ago I started to self teach myself how to decorate, this was a perfect next step in my quest to conquer cake.
Orignally, I was actually going to do a different design but everything changed when I went to make my fondant (from a mix) and THEN realized that I had completely bought the wrong type of fondant (dry vs rolled). So I had a pound of fondant meant to go inside of candies instead of a pound of fondant meant to be rolled out for cakes. My amazing boyfriend watched as I completely freaked out and tried to decide what to do and he said I should make a cake completely out of petit fours (I had mentioned that dry fondant is great as a petit four coating) especially if the design was pixelated. Well, while looking at designs we found "Killing Time" and I had an idea.
My initial idea was to make a bunch of petit fours and have some be white, some be blue, and then use marzipan for the decorations. Well, the cake portion came out great (it was a cream cheese pound cake) and the layering went rather well (cherry preserves). When I got to the part where you coat the petit fours in fondant however, I had a few issues. The fondant tasted great and had a rather good white color, but it only covered about 12 and I had nearly 80 to cover. I did happen to have two bags of fondant however, so I thinned the second batch and I was able to coat the rest of the cakes, but the color was not there. Some of the petit fours had this thick white coat and the others looked like they were just glazed.
I decided to go ahead and assemble the cake anyways, I just followed the pattern from the shirt and I added extra cake to make up the blue portion of the design. After staring at these uneven and multi-colored cakes, I decided the best route would be to make a fondant and just cover all of the cakes, so they would be individual yet part of a whole at the same time. I used my favorite recipe (marshmallow fondant of course) and went to rolling out the fondant. Well, I live in Texas and I am a new resident, still getting used to the heat. The fondant and I fought, a LOT. So instead of one big smooth covering, I kind of had to Frankenstein the fondant together which worked in the end but wasn't quite what I wanted.
Finally, I painted certain squares blue using a thinned down gel color and added the marzipan decorations. I used fondant cutters for the numbers and I handmade the flags. I had thought about making some small figures to match the design more, but I used up more marzipan when I had to REMAKE all of the decorations. The first batch fell onto the ground about an hour before I was going to decorate. However, everything came together.
The entire cake is edible except for a few toothpicks that helped hold up the flags. As mentioned it is made up of cherry/pound cake petit fours covered (mostly) in a glaze of dry fondant and topped with marshmallow fondant and marzipan. I brought the cake to my graduate school (I am getting my Masters in chemistry!) and everyone really enjoyed the cake. I think most people loved how easy it was to just pull off a small piece, many people took 2 or more pieces and didn't feel too guilty. It was a long process that did not go anywhere where I expected it to but I had fun and it was definitely different yet good experience.
Orignally, I was actually going to do a different design but everything changed when I went to make my fondant (from a mix) and THEN realized that I had completely bought the wrong type of fondant (dry vs rolled). So I had a pound of fondant meant to go inside of candies instead of a pound of fondant meant to be rolled out for cakes. My amazing boyfriend watched as I completely freaked out and tried to decide what to do and he said I should make a cake completely out of petit fours (I had mentioned that dry fondant is great as a petit four coating) especially if the design was pixelated. Well, while looking at designs we found "Killing Time" and I had an idea.
My initial idea was to make a bunch of petit fours and have some be white, some be blue, and then use marzipan for the decorations. Well, the cake portion came out great (it was a cream cheese pound cake) and the layering went rather well (cherry preserves). When I got to the part where you coat the petit fours in fondant however, I had a few issues. The fondant tasted great and had a rather good white color, but it only covered about 12 and I had nearly 80 to cover. I did happen to have two bags of fondant however, so I thinned the second batch and I was able to coat the rest of the cakes, but the color was not there. Some of the petit fours had this thick white coat and the others looked like they were just glazed.
I decided to go ahead and assemble the cake anyways, I just followed the pattern from the shirt and I added extra cake to make up the blue portion of the design. After staring at these uneven and multi-colored cakes, I decided the best route would be to make a fondant and just cover all of the cakes, so they would be individual yet part of a whole at the same time. I used my favorite recipe (marshmallow fondant of course) and went to rolling out the fondant. Well, I live in Texas and I am a new resident, still getting used to the heat. The fondant and I fought, a LOT. So instead of one big smooth covering, I kind of had to Frankenstein the fondant together which worked in the end but wasn't quite what I wanted.
Finally, I painted certain squares blue using a thinned down gel color and added the marzipan decorations. I used fondant cutters for the numbers and I handmade the flags. I had thought about making some small figures to match the design more, but I used up more marzipan when I had to REMAKE all of the decorations. The first batch fell onto the ground about an hour before I was going to decorate. However, everything came together.
The entire cake is edible except for a few toothpicks that helped hold up the flags. As mentioned it is made up of cherry/pound cake petit fours covered (mostly) in a glaze of dry fondant and topped with marshmallow fondant and marzipan. I brought the cake to my graduate school (I am getting my Masters in chemistry!) and everyone really enjoyed the cake. I think most people loved how easy it was to just pull off a small piece, many people took 2 or more pieces and didn't feel too guilty. It was a long process that did not go anywhere where I expected it to but I had fun and it was definitely different yet good experience.