Soccer Jersey Chocolate Cake

So, about that other cake I made at the end of last week. A few weeks back, a good friend, Mariana (check out her fantastic blog, Gift Favours Under $5), asked me to make a birthday cake featuring the Stoke On The Trent football team's jersey and logo.

This seemed like an easy enough challenge although I was pretty nervous about making a cake for someone outside my family. This was the first time that failure would not be an option and I was feeling the pressure, and for good reason.

I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe for this cake, and it turned out quite nicely except that the chocolate chips in it stuck to the bottom of the pan and it broke coming out. Broke only slightly, but broke nonetheless.

I managed to save the situation by using that broken side of the cake to trim in order to make the sleeves. Crisis averted. For the time being.

Next, my chocolate butter cream was too thick and wouldn't go on smoothly, so I had to thin it out so that I could have a smooth surface.

Next, my fondant was drying out a quite a rapid pace (quicker than usual) and would not cooperate. As if it needed to be more problematic when I'd already fought tooth and nail to get it red.

Finally, I was doing a shell border around the edge of the cake and ran out of white icing with about 3 inches to go and had to make more for that tiny length. By the time I was finished, it looked like a bomb had gone off in my kitchen, with chocolate icing in one corner, vanilla butter cream in another, and the counter covered in scraps of fondant. It took an hour (with the help of my lovely mother) to clean up the mess of icing sugar, fondant, and butter cream that coated just about every surface.

Needless to say, when it was all said and done I was less than satisfied with the results of this cake. Perhaps that was just due to my frustration, I can't be sure. I guess it's true that we are our own harshest critics. Although, I did use gum paste for the first time when making the crest and I can honestly say that I quite enjoyed using it. It's much easier to work with than fondant.

Homemade Fondant Icing

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a photo of homemade fondant on Pinterest, and re-pinned the photo/link so that I could refer to it in the future. The future has arrived, my friends.

Until now I'd always been using store-bought fondant. I didn't have a clue what I was doing, and felt that it was best to stick with the pre-made stuff. Having said that, let me tell you that buying fondant is expensive. Especially for any fondant other than basic white. So I finally decided that I'd attempt to make my own, keeping in mind the link I'd found (click here to see it for yourself). I didn't have the web page open in front of me, but kept it in mind while making the fondant.


Like the instructions showed, I used multi-coloured marshmallows. I bought two bags and sorted through them to separate all of the colours, and set each group aside in its own Ziplock bag.


The first colour I used was the pink, and it didn't go nearly as smoothly as the green and yellow did - I ran out of icing sugar before I got to make the orange. Anyway, the instructions say to toss the marshmallows in a small amount of water. I forgot that step, and ended up with a sticky mess that was a nightmare to work with. The marshmallow goo got stuck to the spoon, to the bowl, to the counter, the cutting board, my hands, everything you could imagine. The hassle of getting the sticky gunk off everything was nearly enough to put me off making marshmallow fondant again.

Rather than give up right away, however, I checked back to that link, via Pinterest, and found that I had forgotten one tiny, simple step. I decided to try again with the yellow marshmallows and found that it worked much better. So, the key is to toss those little marshmallows with water! It made the whole process so much smoother, and it actually ended up being pretty simple. By the time I'd moved on to the green marshmallows, I felt like a pro.

Now, I don't really like the taste of fondant, though it looks nice (thank heavens for the real icing layer that's found under fondant), but the marshmallow stuff tastes worlds better than the store bought kind, and its so much nicer on the wallet!