Playin' In The Sprinkler

Oddly enough, I rarely make cakes from the shirts from Threadless I actually own. So I made it up for this time by using this design, which we have bought TWICE because it was that awesome.

I started in the usual way- butter, eggs, sugar, flour, milk, cocoa powder- with a new recipe called "chocolate donut cake" and made myself a boring old square cake. While it was baking, I made that delicious stuff called marshmallow fondant and colored it 8 different colors. I debated making the base navy blue, but frankly it was easier to just leave it white and I actually thought it was pretty that way. Somehow white says candy and sweets to me better than navy blue. As a result, I dyed some vanilla-ish colored fondant to make the ice cream in the cone a bit different color. It was my trickiest color. I was good this time. I made twice the amount of fondant I usually do. So now of course, I have tons leftover. But this is not all bad. I now have the beginnings of another cake.

The next day I made a chocolate roux frosting. I have made a vanilla version before, which has now eclipsed buttercream as my favorite frosting, and was very curious to see how it would hold up under fondant. While the cooked base for the frosting cooled in my fridge, I set about beginning the modeling of my little donut and ice cream cone, which turned out adorable, as I knew they would. When the base had cooled, I got to strain it and then mix in butter until it turned into a beautiful and very tasty frosting. At this point, it was time to frost the cake and stick it in the fridge to set a bit.

Shortly after dinner, I pulled the cake out again and frosted it again and added the bottom layer of fondant. Then the really fun part starts when you can DECORATE! I placed my donut and ice cream cone first, built them a sprinkler and hose, and then added all those sprinkles, which are REAL sprinkles, one by one with tweezers. It was time consuming, but not really that bad. And fun. I rolled out a little snake of pink to finish the edge and VOILA! Cake is done.

The next day we cut into it. I discovered a few things. First, my chocolate donut cake just tastes like a chocolate cake. But that isn't horrible. Chocolate is good. Second, chocolate roux frosting held up superbly under the fondant (even 3 days later). Third, chocolate roux frosting tastes even better than buttercream under fondant because it's not so sweet, thereby allowing you to enjoy the fondant more instead of scraping it all off at the end because you are on sugar overload.

My daughter and I had to pose with our matching shirts and the cake-eating commenced! I would estimate my cake making time about the same it usually is, 5 hours or so. Thanks again Threadcakes. I may have a little more to say another time. I have a lot of fondant just sitting around now begging to be used.