A 'Carrot' cake

I previously posted about a cake I had made for a friends birthday, but I said that I would make another post about the actual cake, so here it is!

Photo provided by Max Mercier

Please excuse the messy sides, there was originally a 'paper-bag' to wrap around the outside which the birthday people decided not to apply it, if I'd know that I would have brought a scrapper to give it a better design (good to know for next time=)

Photo provided by Max Mercier

The cake went down really, really well. The birthday boy was so happy with it, which is the best feeling, and the birthday girl who was presenting it to her boyfriend was so so pleased and excited to show him. Other people also got excited and a couple of different people commented that they thought the cake had real carrots stuck into it so the fact that it was made of marshmallow fondant was a sweet surprise. The bunny and the stalks you can see are inedible but everything else is yummy. So I'll show you how I did it.

The tools I used were the wilton PME flower and leaf shaper and the PME serrated and taper cones and the two tools god gave me, hands.

I will show you how I made the big carrot to go along side the cake but all the carrots were made this way, only smaller.

First use your hands to warm up and mould the marshmallw fondant into a basic carrot shape.

This might take a bit of work, as you can see the fondant can be dry and crack, so it's important to really work it well with your hands to get a smooth finish.

Then take your PME leaf shapper and use the curved sharp end to drag out the lines in the carrot

Once your happy with the amount of lines then swap to your PME taper cone and use this o shape the top of the carrot.

So putting together the cake. I used miny straws as dowels under each carrot as these carrots are heavy! The cake itself is the same recipe I used here and the icing is the same as the one I used here. Once the cake was baked, iced and moved to location only then did I add the carrots.

Photo provided by Max Mercier

Photo provided by Max Mercier

Once the whole top was cover then I took the stalks from the organic carrots that had been washed and saved and inserted them into the tops of my candy carrots.

Photo provided by Max Mercier

And placed in the little bunny. So yes, that's how I made this carrot cake  and as you can see it's really easy so I'd recommend that you try it yourself and enjoy =)

Rabbit in a sea of carrots!

Some of the photos for today's post were kindly provided by Max Mercier as he was taking photos at the party. I want to thank Max for his beautiful photos and the permission to use them here.

Marshmallow Fondant

Recently a very good friend asked me to do a cake for her boyfriend's birthday. We decided on the cake and theme and I knew it would need fondant. Fondant is the only way to make sculpted pieces or cover cake but the only problem is that classic fondant tastes disgusting! So I decided to try out marshmallow fondant and I must say I was very impressed!

The recipe is very simple

450g miny marshmallows
60ml water
1 tsp extract of choice ( I used orange)
2-3 tsp food colouring gel
800g Icing Sugar
2-3 tsp butter

1 - Melt your marshmallows in the microwave for 1 minute.

2 - Add your extract and food colouring to the water and then stir into the marshmallows until they
     are fully melted.

3 - Add your icing sugar slowly and stir. Half-way through this process I moved the mixture to my kitchenaid and continued to beat in the icing sugar a bit at a time.

4 - Finally turn the mixture out onto a sheet and rub down with the butter and knead until it is no longer sticky.

5 - Store in an air-tight container overnight.

6- Use to scult or cover as you will.

The from this fondant is another post.