How can I ice a frozen cake? Will fondant work?

[MerryMarigold]

OK, so this is my slightly crazy idea. I am making ds2 a football cake. I saw this great video on youtube (German) where this lady squished a cake into a bowl lined with clingfilm, filled it with cream and then squished more cake in. the base is cake. Then you refrigerate, turn it out so it's a dome and ice it as a football with buttercream.

But I don't want to do that!

I will copy the basic idea but make an ice-cream cake on the inside with red and white ice cream and some thin layers of chocolate cake. However, it does need to look like a football. Do you think I can put the fondant in first, then the cake etc etc. so that when I turn it out the fondant is on the top? Will the fondant freeze ok? When the fondant defrosts will it go very gooey. I guess it won't get to defrost since the cake is made of ice-cream and will need to be eaten quickly!

Oh, and do you need to make a special kind of cake that is edible whilst fairly frozen?!

Why not make a mini one as an experiment? Use a dessert bowl and cheap ingredients.

is there a type of cake that's nicely edible when frozen enough to stop the ice cream melting?

Swiss roll. That's what people use when they make a "Bombe". You slice it all into round coasters and layer them on the bow's surface. Nice to eat frozen!

Googe "Swiss roll bombe cake" and you will see...must be iceable...

If you freeze fondant it goes all sweaty and yukky once it hits the air and will not be nice.

Why not cut you cake into chocolate and white octagons to line the bowl in the beginning?

momb. That is an absolutely fantastic idea. I am going to do that. I can make chocolate and vanilla cakes, thin ones like swiss roll, and there is an octagon cutter I've seen on ebay. Thank you so much. Mumsnet comes up trumps again!

I like momb's idea. Apart from the fondant going sticky it tastes vile.

I know, but you can usually peel it off. I made a really hideous swiss buttercream for dd's cake last year. It looked fab and had a great texture, but man, it just tasted like marg (even though it's made with butter).

Just a small point but might make your life a hell of a lot easier - footballs are not made from octagons, they are intersecting pentagons and hexagons. You can get specific football cutter sets on eBay which have both shapes in, sized to fit a 6" sphere. Don't try tessalating octagons, you'll be tearing your hair out!

Thanks Lizzie. Yes, I saw the set on ebay and was trying to figure out how they work together. You'd think I'd know after the amount of time I've spent gazing at footballs, both in RL and on the TV!