First Foray with Fondant

I've decided to try my hand at baking and decorating cakes.  For those of you who know me; this is ironic, if not completely comical.  My father is a baker and I have fought hard for the better part of my twenty-seven years NOT to do anything that even slightly resembled baking or even cooking for that matter.  I am a self proclaimed expert at take-out, an art that I perfected during my time in New York City.

But, this is something that I've always wanted to try.  I love to decorate and design in my own space and a cake is a blank palate to do just that.  My best friend's bridal shower was last week, so, the party presented the perfect opportunity to give it a try...

First, I made some MMF (that's baker speak for Marshmallow Fondant). Find the recipe here. It was sticky and messy, but fun and super easy to make.  Plus, I have a built in vacuum cleaner who licked up the film of powdered sugar I left on the kitchen floor.

For this first cake, I just made a cake out of a box. Two 6 in round pans that I baked then leveled with one of these cool leveler contraptions.  Let me just say, that this was done by trial and error. I watch a lot of food network and TLC and I just did what I thought Buddy might do on Cake Boss.  Also, I watched some YouTube videos.

Here is the finished product:

Not so bad for my first try... this is not the cake that I baked for the party, this was just to prove to myself that I could do it, pictures and post coming soon of the actual party cake.

*(not sure how this blog thing works, but the recipe is compliments of Peggy Weaver, via a google search...want to make sure I give credit)