Early Valentine’s :)

I mentioned last week that I might make a Valentine’s cake this weekend, even though it would be a little early. I decided to go for it. I realized that the weekend before Valentine’s Day I won’t have time to make a Valentine cake because I’ll be busy making a cake for my niece’s birthday. So why not go ahead and break out the hearts and pink icing now? 🙂

I cannot take any credit for the design of this cake. I saw this cake on cakecentral.com last year just after Valentine’s Day and saved it. The lady who actually came up with the concept deserves props for this. I just did my best to make mine look half as good as hers. 🙂

I started my making my own fondant. This stuff is WAY better than the store bought kind. I found a recipe for marshmallow fondant a long time ago. I kept putting it off because I wasn’t sure how hard it would be, but I wish I’d tried this stuff as soon as I came across the recipe. Not only does it have a better flavor, it’s also much easier to work with. It all starts by heating up marshmallows in the microwave.

After about a minute, they are nice and melty and puffy. Water and a little bit of vanilla get added here.

After stirring in the water and vanilla the marshmallows become very smooth. Sticky too, but smooth. 🙂

The great thing about making your own fondant is that while the mixture is still a liquid you can add in the coloring that you want to use. This was much easier than trying to knead color into fondant. I wanted a bright pink for this cake. 🙂 The coloring is a little off in the picture. I still can’t quite figure out the different settings on this new camera. But this will give you an idea:

Once the color is incorporated it’s time to add powdered sugar, and believe me: it takes a LOT of stirring/kneading to get 2 pounds of powdered sugar mixed in!

Once I make several batches of this fondant and get the hang of it, I think it’ll go a little quicker. But 20 minutes later….here’s what I had. My own fondant! 🙂 That made me happy. 🙂

This had to sit in the fridge overnight before being used on the cake. In the meantime, I shaped some hearts from some black fondant.

This morning I took the fondant back out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature before getting started on the cake again. I rolled it out and was pleased with how smooth it was. Making fondant wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it might be.

I rolled out fondant for all three of my round tiers- 4″, 6″, and 8″. I covered each of them and smoothed out the fondant and was impressed with how easy this marshmallow fondant was to use. Much easier to handle and smooth than the ready made kind.

As I stacked the fondant covered tiers I added a black fondant border at the bottom of each layer.

The final step was to add the hearts I made yesterday. I really like how this one turned out!

Up Next: Chocolate cookies

Random Thought of the Day: Sweet Tea. I love it. I’m having some now. You should too. 😉