How to Cover a Cake in Fondant

Steps:
1. We've got a beautiful, chilled cake that's been perfectly crumb coated. It's ready to go. I have some fondant paste here. And what fondant paste basically is is a gelatin and powdered sugar mixture, and it should feel like Play-Doh. So, once you get it out of your bucket, you want to knead it. Press down with the heel of your hand forward, then take your fingers and fold it back over. If you feel any crumbly bits, you want to cut them out right away. You don't want to incorporate them into your fondant, or you're going to have some little pebbles in there. They don't get softer.

2. So it should get to the consistency where, when you rub it like this, you get a beautiful, smooth finish. You shouldn't see any little folds in there. Now, how much fondant do you need for a cake? That's a great question. What I have here is one of my many tape measures. And what I'm going to do is lightly drape it over the cake. Alright. So, this goes to the three-seventh mark.

Th3. e way to measure your fondant is you want to have a disc that's about an inch tall that will flip over three times within that amount of area. So I've got my measure down here to three-seven. I'm going to mark it with my fondant paddle, you guys can see it there. And I don't know if I have one, two, three, it's pretty much perfect. It's a little bit thick, so I'm going to cut a little off. I don't want to have so much that I've got a giant overhang over my cake. If I do that, it's going to really tug down. This is not light stuff, and my corners are fairly sharp. So if I have too much fondant and too much overhang, it's going to really want to rip around the top, which can be very frustrating.

4. You'll notice, too, that my cake is on top of a little riser here. And that's so that, after it's fondanted, I can go in and cut straight around. I don't have to go in and cut around the edge there, so I'm going to get a nice, sharp edge to my bottom. Move that off to the side.

5. I have some powdered sugar here and a fine-mesh strainer. I have two fondant paddles. I like to have two so I can have one hand on top while the other one smooths the side. And I'm going to put a thin, light layer of powdered sugar over the entire area which I'm going to roll it out onto. So I'm not just doing a pile in the center and pushing it out. I'm doing the giant, giant circles. So that's about how big it's going to be. Less is more with the powdered sugar. You don't want to overdo it because the corn starch that is in powdered sugar will dry it out really quickly.

6. The pin that I'm using is a French rolling pin. What I really love about this is that it's beveled on the side so that I can give more pressure on the left side or the right side so that I get a really perfect circle. Also, my right arm is much stronger than my left, so this helps me to even that out.

7. So I'm going to start by just rolling between here and here. You'll notice I'm not going over the edge. I pick up a little more of the powdered sugar. If you're doing a lot of these, it's a good idea not to wear blue jeans. This will pick up any kind of lint. The powdered sugar helps to create a static electricity, so any little fuzzies will attach to this. Okay, here we go.

8. Now is not the time to answer the phone. If you walk away from this, it's going to be so dry that when you try to put it on your cake, it's going to crack around the edges, and you're going to get what looks like elephant skin. I'm taking this down to about an eighth of an inch. If you can see the pattern of