Ben B is the kind of person that made me start to write this blog.  After he read my fondant recipe he started to make amazing fondant cakes, and even better, he sent me pictures of the fondant cake he made

His first cake was a blast, I was happy to receive his second mail with pictures of his new fondant cake: Vanilla Digger Fondant cake.

Ben's Fondant Digger Cake

Here’s what he wrote:

I made this cake at the weekend and it came out really well, it actually looks better in real life than in the pictures!!
It is a 1:20 scale model of a Komatsu PC228 made from vanilla cake with a gingerbread boom and it is 100% edible.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m an engineer and it was a real challenge to get this to stand up, taste good and be 100% edible!

Cheers,

I think it looks just brilliant:

Fondant recipe used for Digger Cake

And another one:

Another view of Ben's Fondant cake

Great work Ben, I hope to see more of your work here.

I hope your success will encourage more readers to try my fondant recipe to learn how to make fondant. You all can imagine how much a cake like that costs in the shop, I can assure you that the “make it yourself” costs are hardly 10% of that price, in addition to your satisfaction when showing off your cake.

Happy Cooking

My Fondant Recipe is the star of all my recent posts, that’s because I keep getting mails from readers that tried my Fondant Recipe.

This is a short post just to share a few of the recent pictures I received, thank you all for sending me pictures, I’ll do my best to post your pictures as soon as I get them.

Karenda sent me this picture, her first time to try my fondant recipe:

Karenda's Fondant Cake using my Fondant Recipe

I think it’s great for first attempt, Fondant Shapes, smooth covering and great coloring on the stars. You can read my coloring post to learn how to color fondant.

Erica sent me a picture of her first attempt with fondant recipe; she is very pleased with the results and she have every reason to be so:

Fondant Recipe - Ericka's Fondant cake

It’s a smooth, beautifully shaped and colored cake, if that what you got on your first attempt I can’t wait to see your future cakes!

Last but not least is Stephanie that used my fondant recipe to prepare a fondant cake for her son’s 2nd birthday. Here’s what she wrote:

Thanks so much!  I have shred your recipe already and my friend (that bakes regularly) used it last weekend also.  We both love it!

My cake may not be perfect but in my house cake comes from a box and frosting comes from a can.  After a terrible experience for my son’s first birthday, we will make our own cake from now on.  It hurt to spend $100 on an ugly cake.  My cake may not have been perfect but it was great considering my limited cooking/baking/decorating skills.

After reading her mail, reading about her limited cooking skills and the cake not being perfect, I was very surprised to see the cake she made:

Stephanie's Fondant cake

If you paid a 100$ for this cake it’d be a great deal! This is the kind of cakes you’d be happy to pay for in shops. It’s true that it can get A LITTLE better when it comes to the finishing touch, but I can assure you that my first fondant covered cake didn’t look that good!

I’m happy to get such pictures as it shows me that my fondant recipe is making people happy, you’re all welcome to try it and send me pictures of the cakes you made.

If you’re not sure which cake should be used as the base for this fondant recipe, you should try my fondant friendly cake recipe.

Happy Cooking

My Fondant Recipe is one of my most popular recipes, and the reason I love it most is because I get so many responses to it. People keep sending me pictures and sharing their experience with this recipe, and that’s what this blog is all about

I suggest you read Ben B’s story below, his first time working with Fondant Recipe is so successful, I hope it’d inspire all of you to give it a try!

Here’s Ben’s mail:

Fondant Recipe - Lightening McQueen Fondant Cake

Hi,

I just really wanted to let you know how much fun I had over the weekend creating my first fondant covered cake! Not only did I use your fondant recipe (less the vegetable shortening, is this the reason for the cracking in the surface of the fondant or is that just a slight error in the consistency?) and your tips on how to colour the fondant but I also used your fondant friendly cake recipe, all of which were superb.

I consider myself to be fairly proficient at baking and cake decorating but this has now opened up a whole new world. I have previously avoided fondant because I had only ever had the commercial type and I find that very offensive to taste and in my opinion if the cake looks great but doesn’t taste great, it’s a failure! This however is delicious! (is it possible to get actual almond extract? All I seem to be able to find is artificially flavoured which I generally stay away from?).

The problem that I have when I decorate cakes is that when I finish all I can see is the errors and that is the case with this cake as well although after getting up the next morning and seeing it I am quite pleased with and proud of the result! The worst thing on this cake is the black finishing icing, its rough and in the wrong place in several areas but I have put that down to it being done at 2 in the morning having been at work all day!!!! I also still need to work out (or can you tell me?) how to attach pieces such as the spoiler without leaving such a large and visible seem. This would also be useful for fixing any tears that do occur!

You can also just see that in the lightning strikes down the side that I tried to kneed and roll out a sheet of fondant that fades from yellow to orange! It has sort of worked but I should probably have used less colour in the yellow end to start with (as per your advice, that’s midnight lazy syndrome!). Any tips on how to get that effect?

Anyway, I should stop waffling now! Thanks again for such a great experience, I have a baby shower cake to make this weekend and the only way to go now is fondant. I will send you some pictures and my intention is to leave you speechless as Brandy did with what is a truly mesmerising cake!

Yours hoping to get a picture in your blog,

Ben

And here are a few more pictures he sent:

Lightening McQueen Fondant cake

Lightening McQueen Fondant cake - side view

How to make fondant cake - By Ben

Thank you Ben for following my fondant recipe and for taking the time to send me this mail and the beautiful pictures of your cake, I agree that there’s a room for improvements but I can assure you that your cake looks WAYYYY better than any of my first cakes.

Happy Cooking

My Fondant Recipe – “How to make fondant” is one of my greatest successes. Not only it gets many compliments, it gets people so happy with the result that they take the time to write and tell me about their experience.

I LOVE getting readers’ mails for several reasons, but the thing I didn’t expect is that in many cases I learn new things regarding my recipes. In the Mail below Janna actually improved my Fondant Recipe, You can benefit from her experience.

Janna made this lovely fondant cake following my fondant recipe, here’s what she wrote:

Janna's Fondant Cake

Hi there.

First of all, THANK YOU for all the very good information on your website. After years of decorating many cakes over the years with (unwieldy and annoying) buttercream, I decided to make the leap into the wild world of fondant, and the results were beautiful, as you will see!

The fondant tasted delicious, as did the fondant-friendly cake (everyone exclaimed with shock and surprise at how delicious the cake itself was… tender, moist, and STURDY.)
I crumb-coated it with buttercream made with butter-flavored Crisco. I chose that over butter because I knew the cake would be sitting out in the sun for a long time. It sat out, uncovered, from 10 pm last night to 3 pm today, for three hours of that in near-direct sun, and it didn’t so much as budge. It held up PERFECTLY, not one sign of melt or sweat.

It spent the entire night (14 hours!) out in open air so the fondant could dry, and it did not impact the moistness of the cake one iota. By the way, this was my very first experience with fondant, but I made three batches in total. The first fondant batch was a crumbly mess (in retrospect, too much sugar added too early), and I had to throw it away. The second fondant batch came out beautifully–it was the main covering–and contrary to your advice I did add the gel coloring and the shortening during the initial mix. I also used my Kitchen Aid mixer to do most of the mixing, using the dough hook, and did the final kneading by hand.

Adding the color and shortening at that time worked great, as did using the mixer. I also added some salt to the mix, which I do with all my frostings and fillings. It makes the sweet “pop” more. The third fondant batch was pure white to color small pieces for the design. Instead of plastic wrap, I kept tupperware containers handy which was much more convenient. May I suggest that you place more emphasis in the fondant recipe on not putting in ALL the sugar that the recipe can contain? If you do so, then once the fondant cools it is far too stiff. Advise users of the recipe that the HEAT of the fondant is the key element to easy handling.

Fondant Recipe - decorating with fondant

You may be interested to know that, for my party of approximately 50 people, I made a huge (16″) cake, which required two entire batches of batter. I flavored it using almond AND vanilla, and twice as much salt as the recipe called for.

I used my deep dish pizza pan to bake it, which fit an entire batch of batter.
Before baking, I divided the batter into six bowls and tinted each one of the colors of the rainbow. I poured in red, then orange on that, then yellow on that, etc. I made both layers of the cake like this. When I assembled the cake, I fit them together so the final color (purple) of each layer touched, so we had a big purple center with rainbow radiating out from it. It looked magnificent!

Fondant recipe - The rainbow look of the cake

My mother-in-law took a short video of the moment when I surprised our guests by slicing into the cake… I’ll send it along too. It was a fun addition to a child’s birthday cake fantasy come true! Finally, I took your (amazing) cake recipe and The cake was a humongous success at my son’s sixth birthday party.

Thanks for making my first experience with fondant such a resounding success and for making my son’s birthday party so special!

Best, Janna

Janna – Thank you very much for your mail! I actually learnt how to improve my fondant recipe, mails such as yours makes me find the time and energy to continue my blog.

Happy Cooking

Brandy shows How to make fondant!

My Fondant Recipe brings a lot of mails and comments, but Brandy really got me speechless.

She followed my fondant recipe, and here’s what she wrote:

I tried your fondant recipe not only was it easy, but it tasted super! Thank you so much! Here is my cake. I think it turned out pretty well considering it is only the 2nd time I have used fondant.

 

Thanks Again

 

Brandy, 35

In Washington State

The reason for me being speechless is the quality if the cake she made in her SECOND attempt with fondant!

Fondant recipe cake

I must admit that m second attempt with the fondant recipe was much poorer than this, Brandy – I’ll be happy to post all pictures of future cake you make using my fondant recipe.

If you want to read more users stories of their experience with my fondant recipe, please visit:

• Fondant Recipe – Alison’s experience
• Fondant Recipe – Amy Johnson’s experience
• Fondant recipe – Jacalyn’s Experience
• Fondant Recipe – Stephanie’s Experience
• How to make fondant – Gerbera Daisy Cake

If you make a cake using my fondant recipe you can send it to me and I’ll be happy to post it, my mail address is theduke@thecookduke.com

Happy Cooking