Cake decorating help

[Dancer12345]

Have been asked to make a birthday cake for a friend’s relative. The baking part isn’t an issue as I love making Victoria sponges. I normally don’t ice them though, but obviously need to do this one.

I need a simple but pretty fondant icing design. I’ve never really used fondant icing before so any tips or tricks would be most welcome! Thanks!

Does it need to be fondant? There's a really pretty and easy pattern you can do with chocolates:

www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/10073362/Chocolate-flowers-cake-decoration.html

Agreed with pp, use chocolates/sweets/fresh fruit and avoid showing icing if you have no experience with it. It gets messy if you don't know what you're doing.

Oh wow, that looks amazing! Looks really impressive.

Maybe I’m better going for something like that then. I was looking forward to trying out fondant but maybe I should have a practise sometime!

There are loads of online tutorials if you want to give fondant a go. I think covering the cake to give a smooth finish is harder than it looks though! You need a crumb coat and I'd say don't roll the fondant too thin as you're more likely to get cracks / splits.

You could decorate with a few fondant flowers maybe? Weirdly, I think making things like flowers are easier than covering the cake!

Fondant tasted grim.
Better to follow the above suggestions. Or maybe ganache.

I just cannot master covering with fondant! Every cake I now do is either ‘naked’ or buttercreamed.

Friend has sent me this pic suggesting something similar. Would this be too difficult? I was thinking of doing a square cake, so presumably that would be easier to cover and get smoother. I could leave off the fancy swirly bits. The spots would be ok though, right?

Or am I being naive?!

I don’t use fondant it’s rank!

What about buttercream? Takes a bit of practice to level but tastes so much nicer.

Fondant is quite hard to layer, but there’s some decent you tube vids if you want to use fondant.

Can you give it a trial run and see how it goes?

I also think fondant is deceptively hard. It's very hard to get it so flawless.

I'm a little confused as to why they have asked you to make it when you haven't made one before.

(I teach cake decorating for a living)

I think square cakes are generally more tricky to cover in fondant because of the corners.

The photo you shared of the bow design is pretty and simple, but fondant alone won’t work for the bow - too floppy! For a beginner I’d say either use modelling paste (can buy in Sainsbury’s) or modelling chocolate. Colour with gel colours. Good luck!

If you want to go with fondant then I have a couple of tips ( never used it before I had kids as I don’t like it but it works best for their novelty cakes)

buy good fondant - squires or the like rather than super market stuff
make sure your working area is spotless before getting it out - of course your area will be clean but I have had issues of cake crumbs spoiling the finish.
*use cornflour for dusting and rolling out

• coat the cake with buttercream and put in the fridge to go hard before covering in fondant.

Also like has been mentioned above check out a few of the you tube tutorials for tips - very handy.

I had a terrible time with fondant. I would definitely recommend a trial run.

Sounds like I’m best avoiding fondant then. Will try the chocolate one.

They asked me to do it as they know I enjoy baking and they like my Victoria sponges! They’re not expecting it to be professional standard, but obviously still needs to look good.

Fondants a bastard,I’ve never managed to make it look good.

Google ‘chocolate explosion cake’. You can make a simple sponge look really impressive and professional .

Like these

Also, do lots of tiers, I usually go for 4. Always looks more impressive.