So yeah, the secret project was a birthday cake for running friend Paul’s 50th birthday party. I had to keep it secret because I’m not really sure who reads this thing and I didn’t want word to spread. I had to bite my tongue until after the fact.

During a dim sum lunch last Sunday the fact that I’m doing a George Brown baking class came up. Off to the side, I was asked if I would be interested in making the cake for an upcoming surprise party. Well, I was hesitant because it felt like it would be a big responsibility. I said that it’d likely be a simple cake if I did do it if only because I wouldn’t be able to do one of those super fancy cakes you see on TV. That, and I’ve never properly decorated a cake before. After some assurance that it wasn’t about how fancy it’d be, but the fact that it came from me that’d make it special, I decided to go for it. From that point forward my head started swimming with ideas. I started doodling some sketches as to what might be possible, and I eventually settled on a vine and leaf design. I started scanning YouTube for cake ideas and I decided that I’d try my hand at making a fondant cake. I’d never worked with fondant before but the people in the videos make it look fun. I also did many searches on the web for recipes on cakes, fondants, icings, etc.

From Monday onward I started gathering materials. That included frequent trips to Bulk Barn to get big bags of icing sugar and flour. Who knew that Bulk Barn had tons of cake decorating-related items? So useful! On Tuesday night I made a big batch of fondant. I ended up using the marshmallow fondant recipe from Bakingdom. It was a bit of a sticky mess, but with liberal use of icing sugar I managed to keep it from getting everywhere. Fondant is really like play-doh. It’s kind of cool. That night I also made a batch of chocolate buttercream icing. I used the recipe on the Wilton site. It turned out well, if a little thick. On Wednesday night I picked up more ingredients in anticipation. It was on Thursday night that the magic really began.

On Thursday night, after work I printed out some lettering that I wanted to use on the cake. I cut the letters out to form stencils. After colouring some fondant I rolled it out, placed the lettering on top and cut the letters out of the fondant. That took a fair bit on concentration just to make sure the letters didn’t look wonky. I also started the cake that night. I chose to do a chocolate chiffon cake because chiffon is a bit of a high spongy cake. It turned out well. After letting it cool for a while I cut it in half. I used the buttercream to form a bit of a dam, then took a lot of PC Dulce de Leche and plopped it in the middle. I spread it out nicely before putting the top back on. I think it’s here that I made one or two errors. First, I think I put too much dulce de leche. Secondly I should have pressed the top down to check if I put too much. I’d be able to tell if it oozes out the side, right? Anyway, I did a crumb coat on the cake to ensure that the crumbs were locked in place. After letting that dry I put a lot of buttercream on it and iced it. The end result would have been fine on its own, but I wanted to do a fondant cake. This is where I made another mistake. Since I was doing a fondant cake it would have been better to leave it at the crumb coat. I shouldn’t have iced it further. In any case, I left that overnight to harden. By Friday morning, I was ready to do the fondant work.

I took Friday off in anticipation. I mean, I could have gone to work, but that wouldn’t have left much time at all to get things done. Plus, my mind would not have been able to focus on work-related things. Anyway, on Friday morning I coloured a lot of fondant into different shades. Colouring it involves a heck of a lot of kneading. I took the white fondant, add little streaks of gel colour, then folded it and knead until it was well distributed. Sometimes, when the colour wasn’t strong enough I had to add more colour and knead some more. I swear my arms got one hell of a workout. In all honesty, I think my pecs are sore. Anyway, I made batches of brown, blue, green, and black. There was also a fair bit of white. I took the brown and rolled it out into a large blanket of sorts. It had to be large enough to cover the whole cake. Once it got large enough I laid it on the cake. I was afraid of it tearing, but it was actually great. I had no problem smoothing the thing out. It was at this point though that I saw my over-filling/over-icing mistake. The sides of the cake were rather bulgy. I smoothed it out where I could, but it still didn’t look entirely straight. No matter.

With the fondant on, I set out to add the details. I rolled out two long strips of black and stuck it onto the brown. I figured the border would give it some definition. Then I rolled out the green and cut out thin string-like bits for the vines. I went around the cake and stuck them on. After that I started making the leaves. I started out by cutting the shapes by hand but I learned that using scissors would be faster. I spread those out on the side. To fill things in I added little balls of blue and white on the vines to look like either flowers or fruit…or some indeterminate blob of sorts. After adding the blobs I cut out more leaves to fill in empty spaces. The result looked really good. Early on I was afraid it would be bland, but I was satisfied with the end side-detailing.

After putting the lettering on top I started making out all of the leaves for the top of the cake. I wanted to make it sort of wreath-like. The process was slow, but it wasn’t too bad. I was watching TV while doing it. After making all of the leaves I just stuck them on with a little bit of water. Once everything was set, I noticed that there were some shiny spots on the cake. I set the cake by a fan to dry things out but after an hour the spots didn’t disappear. So, in the end I went in the opposite direction. I brushed all of the fondant with water making the entire thing shiny. It’s probably not the best practice, but for this project it worked. The end result looked awesome. For a first time effort I think it turned out amazing. I boxed it and took it to the party.

Man, I was anxious as hell. Would it be well-received? If people liked how it looked, would it be tasty? I mean, there are cakes out there that look good but taste like crap. I was nervous that the cake might fall into that category. Lucky for me, that wasn’t the case. The cake was entirely well-received; people were impressed. It was also tasty. The dulce de leche and chocolate were a good combo, and the fondant was awesome.

So yes, job well done for me. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m taking a baking course, I might not have had this opportunity. I’m so grateful that people had faith in my abilities. I’m totally excited to take another crack at cake making at some point in the future. Hey, universe! I’m ready! Send me a request from somewhere!