If you don't mind, dear reader, I'm going to share a dream with you. Not one I had when I was asleep, like the time I dreamt my secondary school headteacher was leaping through space over planets made of ice cream, but a life dream. We all have life goals and aspirations, things we want to achieve by the time we're 20, 30, 40 or just by the time we've retired to a cute little country cottage and can say we've done all we wanted to do.
My dreams involve cake. And lots of it. Before they involved cake, I had plans to be an interior designer, then an artist, then a writer, then a book publisher. I have an undergraduate degree in English & Writing that proves my desire to be a writer, and an MA in Publishing that explains the last of that list of dreams, but even that's all behind me now.
You see, I've always known I love food and I've always loved baking, but it never actually occurred to me to try it out as a career. I worked at Greggs for six months as a teenager, but still I never thought "this is the career for me." It was only during the past two to three years when I started baking more and more at home that I figured I should try getting into food properly. So almost out of my MA, I got myself a job at a cafe in a local farm shop, thinking it would be a good insight into the food industry for a year before moving up to London this summer coming.
Boy, have I gotten more than I bargained for. It wasn't too long before I got put into the kitchen and, with a stroke of luck, found myself baking the cakes. It clicked for me then that this was what I wanted to do. Forget my degrees and the money paid (and to be paid) for them, I could bake cakes all day and all night and be as happy as larry for the rest of my years.
And so my dream grew. I can think of nothing now but perfecting my skills in order to open my own cake shop, selling bespoke wedding, birthday, anniversary, any-occasion-you-can-think-of cakes. Working with cake and fondant has become something I absolutely adore doing and, for the first time in a long time, I feel like I have a real talent for something I love. I'm by no means an expert (yet... ;] ), but without too much struggle I feel like I can whip up something half decent. With training and time I believe I can be great at what I want to do and have an amazing and fulfilling career.
A career that is currently being built partly at work, but mostly in my own home kitchen. It's an expensive task to teach yourself to bake at home, but also really rewarding. Discovering new cake flavours, how to craft with fondant, and a little help from YouTube/Pinterest and the like gets my imagination going and is also ridiculous fun (if not also frustrating). It means I can come up with great cakes for family and friends, like this fab owl cake I made for my Mum's birthday.
INGREDIENTS
For the fondant:
450g mini marshmallows
900g icing sugar, sieved
1/4 cup water
1 tsp vanilla extract
To colour:
Blue gel food colouring
Pink gel food colouring
For the coffee sponge:
225g butter
225g caster sugar
3 eggs
225g self raising flour
8 tbsp strong coffee
For the coffee buttercream:
110g butter
6 tbsp strong coffee
250g icing sugar (possibly more, depending on how thick you'd like your buttercream)
METHOD
To start, make the fondant. Sieve all the icing sugar. Place the marshmallows in a large microwaveable bowl and microwave for 30 seconds to 1 minute to start the melting process. Remove from the microwave and add the water and vanilla essence. Stir until a smooth, sticky paste. Add the icing sugar 3-4 tbsps at a time, stirring until fully combined every time. As you go the mixture will get stiffer and stiffer. When too stiff to stir, use very clean hands to incorporate the icing sugar until it is in a solid, smooth and kneadable state. On an icing sugar dusted surface, knead the fondant for 5 to 10 minutes.
To colour, cut into three equal sized pieces. Use a tsp of blue gel food colouring to colour one third pale, sky blue, kneading the colour in until fully incorporated. Cut one of the other thirds in half and using the same method to incorporate colour, make it a pale, baby pink. Leave the other piece white. With the final third, cut in half and using 2-3 tbsp of each colour gel, make one piece a darker, more fuchsia pink and the other a darker blue.
Wrap in clingfilm and keep in an airtight box for up to 10 days. It can also be kept in the fridge, but allow to reach room temperature before use.
Now make the cake. Preheat the oven to 170°C and grease two 8" square cake tins. In a large bowl, soften the butter then add the sugar, whisking until light and fluffy and pale in colour. Add the eggs one by one, beating in fully each time. Add the coffee. To make mine strong, I placed boiling water and 6-7 tbsp of quality, instant coffee in a cup. Once mixed in, add the flour, beating hard to keep the texture of the mixture light and fluffy. Split between two tins and bake for 20-25 minutes until a knife comes out clean.
Leave to cool on a wire rack.
Meanwhile, make the buttercream. Soften the butter and add the coffee. Add the icing sugar bit by bit, beating in well. Keep adding icing sugar until it holds in stiff peaks when you lift out the whisk.
When the cake is cool, begin to ice. If your cakes haven't baked flat slice off the peaked area so they are both flat. When flat, ice a generous layer of buttercream over one cake. Leave a margin around the edge, then place the other cake on top and press gently, moving the buttercream out to the edges. With 3/4 of the remaining buttercream (you'll need some left later for decorating), cover the entire cake in a thin, even layer; enough to make the fondant icing you'll lay over later stick.
Now roll the fondant. Dust a clean surface with icing sugar and make sure your hands are very clean too to avoid dirt marks making their way into the fondant. Roll out the pale blue fondant. It may be quite stiff and take a lot of hard pushing, but keep with it and move around a lot to ensure it isn't sticking to the surface. Roll to the thickness of a 10 pence piece and ensure you have enough fondant to cover the top and sides of the cake comfortably. When ready, lift the fondant and carefully lay it over the cake. Using an icing smoother, smooth and press it over the top of the cake and the sides. Be delicate here, pressing gently and smoothing the sides without pulling and stretching the fondant until it breaks.
When satisfied it is stuck and smooth, cut off the excess fondant.
Time to decorate! Roll out the white fondant to the thickness of a 10 pence piece. Using a medium circular cutter, cut out two circles. Gently, and with a sharp knife, make a criss-cross pattern like quilting. Turn over. On the back of each circle, spread a little of the remaining buttercream and place each circle at the top of the cake, equal distance apart, sticking down with the icing smoother.
Roll out the pale pink fondant to the same thickness as the others. Using a smaller circle cutter than you did for the eyes, cut out two circles. Cover one side with buttercream and stick in the middle of the white circles already on your cake. The small white circles you cut out a little ago now come in handy. Pick each one up and between your thumb and index finger, squish them so they form slightly bigger circles. Cover one side of each in a very small amount of buttercream and stick in the top corner of each pink eye. Use the icing smoother to gently press on the whole of each eye, ensuring it is all stuck.
With a small piece of the dark pink fondant, cut out a triangle and place between the eyes for a beak. With the remaining rolled, pale pink fondant, make feathers. Using a sharp knife, cut a straight line across the top of the rolled fondant. Now place a small, circular cutter halfway across this line and cut so you are left with a semi-circle shape. Do this up to 20 or 30 times until you are confident you have enough feathers to cover your cake, and then do repeat the method with the dark pink and dark blue fondants, cutting out only around 10 of each of these.
When you have all the feathers you need, ensure your hands are clean, then start at the bottom front of the cake by covering the bottom half of the cake in a thin layer of buttercream and sticking the feathers down. You may need extra buttercream on the back of the feathers, too.
Using the pale pink ones as the main colour, add in dark blue and dark pink at random intervals. For a good effect, place one feather, skip the next and place another, then in the gap, add another feather that lays over the edges of both those just placed.
Do this until you have covered all the sides and the top of the cake and you reach the white ribbon you placed earlier.
Finally, dampen a pastry brush with cold water and brush over the finished cake to remove excess icing sugar.
And voila! A finished product!
The whole process for this cake can take anything from 3 hours to 6 hours, depending on how fast you work or how much of a perfectionist you are. It took me, overall, around 5 hours from making the fondant to putting on the last finishing touches. Despite the long hours, it was such a reward to finally have it finished! I'd been thinking up this cake for weeks before my Mum's birthday - planning it, deciding on the sponge flavour, deciding on a colour palette - so to finally see the finished product in front of me was amazing.
It couldn't have turned out better. I was really pleased with the homemade fondant and the finish it gave. I've always found store bought fondant to be tacky to the touch and a little chewy, but this homemade stuff is very smooth, very easy to work with and easy going on the mouth, both taste-wise and chew-wise. It can be a touch delicate, but us bakers also need to have a delicate touch and know that press gently really means press gently! I had a fair job with this cake, the klutz that I am, to not ruin it with heavy-handedness. Clean, gentle hands are essential, and as you may see from a couple of pictures, I haven't perfected that art quite yet, but hope to be there soon!
Speaking of light: the sponge for this cake is delightfully that! I've always had a staple sponge recipe that I just adapt for any flavour, and coffee is a simple change. My Mum has always loved coffee cake ever since I can remember so there was no question that would be flavour for her. Just reduce the amount of eggs and add the coffee for a gorgeously fluffy sponge that, despite how light it is, is a firm foundation to hold all that fondant on top.
You don't have to use a coffee sponge here, though. Any flavour will do. What's great about fondant covered cakes is that it could be any flavour underneath from a plain vanilla sponge to a red velvet. You could maybe even mix and match the flavours, or colour the sponges to match the fondant colours you use to decorate. I know that's a trick I'll try someday!
I hope you have fun mixing and matching with this recipe and trying all kinds of different colour variations. If you want to change things up even more, try making this a round cake or making it three tier. As with all cake, the possibilities are endless!
What was your first ever "big" cake? Do you have any tips for me on how to perfect fondant craft?
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