Strawberry Shortcake Cake

My two-year-old has been begging for a Strawberry Shortcake cake for her birthday for the last 2 months. I already decided I was going to try making my own fondant and use it to decorate a cake. After much searching, deciding, changing my mind, and then searching again, I found the perfect cake to make. I started with finding a fondant recipe. I have heard from many people that the store-bought fondant tastes terrible. I wanted to cover the whole cake in it, so I definitely didn't want horrible tasting fondant all over it.

I went to allrecipes.com and found a recipe for marshmallow fondant. After reading many of the reviews, I decided I would try using marshmallow fluff instead of following the directions for melting down the marshmallows. I took 2 cans of marshmallow fluff and stuck them in the refrigerator over night. I'm not sure why, but that's what the reviewer said to do. The next morning, I took them out and emptied them into my mixer. I continued to add powder sugar into the fluff until I thought it seemed like a good consistency. I have never made or used fondant, so I had no idea what the right consistency was supposed to be. Apparently, it's done when it is not sticky anymore. I ended up kneading it with my hands quite a bit, adding more and more powdered sugar. I probably used a whole 32oz bag of powdered sugar by the time I was done.

Next, I divided the fondant into different sized balls, estimating how much of each color I would need. I then proceeded to knead in the pink, red, green and yellow into the different balls, adding more powdered sugar as the coloring created stickier fondant.

I wrapped the balls in plastic wrap and put them in the freezer until I was ready to use them.

For the cake, I took 2 cake mixes, followed the directions on the box, and then poured them into four 9x9 round baking pans and baked them. While they were cooling, I took a whole container of Cool Whip and mixed in a small container of cut up fresh strawberries. After the cake was cooled, I cut out part of the top of each cake, scooped the Cool Whip mixture into the cake and layered the cake, making a 4 layered cake. Then I wrapped the cake in plastic wrap and put it into the freezer until it was completely frozen.

Next, I took a can of buttercream frosting and frosted the cake. I have read that this will help the fondant stick to the cake. Then I put the cake back in the freezer for when I was ready to tackle the fondant.

After letting the fondant thaw a bit, I realized I needed to mix in more powdered sugar, because it had become sticky again. I took the pink fondant and rolled it out using my wooden roller adding lots of powdered sugar, since it kept sticking to the roller. I rolled it out as much as I could and then placed it over the cake. Unfortunately, it was not large enough to go over the whole cake, so I improvised. I cut off some, so that it draped over the cake nicely. Next, I took the green fondant, rolled it out and wrapped it around the bottom of the cake.

I still had powdered sugar all over the fondant, so, after googling what to do, I grabbed my vegetable oil and paper towel, and proceeded to dab away the powdered sugar from the fondant. It worked very well. As for taste...well, I guess we'll find that out at the party :).

Now, I had a problem. I had the whole middle of the cake to figure out what to do about. I had a little bit of buttercream frosting left from a different jar, so I took that, mixed it with a lighter green color. After that, I took the red fondant and made little strawberries out of it. Using the green fondant again, I cut out small daisy-like flowers to use for the leafing on the strawberries. Next, I placed the strawberries as evenly around the cake as I could. I filled in the rest with the green buttercream frosting I had.

Thankfully I had just enough buttercream frosting. I did not want to have to go to the store again! I used the white fondant for the lettering on top of the cake and threw away the yellow.

I'm not sure if I will use fondant again. It wasn't the easiest or cleanest stuff to use, but I was determined to make it work. I am pretty happy with the end result, and I'm hoping it will taste good.