hi I'm Beth Somers from the Wilton Test Kitchen and I want to show you how
easy it is to cover a round cake with rolled fondant
I have my round cake all set up here ready to go
it's on a 10 inch cake board and I have an 8-inch round cake so you want to put it on a
base that's
at least 2 inches larger than your cake and as you can see
it's very level all the way around that's the first thing that you need to know
because then we can ice it very nice and level
so I have buttercream icing here at a thin consistency which is the perfect
consistency for icing a cake and you're going to spread it onto the cake just like
you would
if you were just icing it normally leaving it as a buttercream
iced cake you want to make sure that you get it as even
as you can it doesn't have to be perfect at this point but as even as you can
because the more even it is the more even your fondant will be
over it so I'm using my
angled spatula here and making sure my top is nice and flat
and I have a normal coating of icing here
a normal amount so if you prefer a quarter inch a half an inch
that's what you should do: okay so that looks good because it's nice
and flat now I'm just going to move to my sides once you have your cake
iced the next thing to do is measure the top and the sides because that's how
you're gonna figure out how large of a piece of fondant you need to roll
measure the height of the cake multiply that by two
and then at the diameter my cake is just about four and a half inches tall
and eight-inches' across so that's how I know how big I need to get
now you're going to take your fondant out
and begin to knead it
you need to knead until its pliable before you start rolling
and the new decorator preferred fondant as much softer
so it actually goes very quickly that's really all I need to do.
my 20-inch roller and I'm going to
simply roll it out most projects will tell you to roll to about an 1/8 of an inch
thickness and I'm using my
Roll-N-Cut mat here as you can see if you're just doing this straight on the
countertop you might want to put some corn starch or confectioners sugar
underneath the fondant to prevent it from sticking you can also if you like
pick it up
and move it like I'm doing once in a while so that it doesn't stick
kind of like pie-dough like that you want to make sure that you're always rolling
from the center
outwards and never fully over the edge of the fondant
so that it remains consistent all the way across
and again we're going for an 1/8 of an inch thickness it's better to start with a circle
because it's easier to finish with a circle if you start with something
that's really misshapen it's harder to get it there
now I'm just going to cut the fondant to the
size that I need eight inches by four and a half inches
I'm going to need about a 17 inch circle after you get your fondant cut
to the size that you need rolled out and cut going to want to make sure that your
cake is ready before that because the fondant
will go on right away you can't let it sit
out too too long or it starts to dry out so what I've done I've just loosely
folded the fondant
over my rolling pin once just like that and what I'm going to do
is start at about an inch
away from me so that the fondant in the back
is touching the base and gently roll my rolling pin
out like that so that the fondant will drape all the way over the cake
now you can see it's draping nicely and it's covering completely
and from here we're going to use a combination of our hands and the fondant
smoother tool
to gently adhere the fondant to the icing underneath
and then start pulling the fondant
away from the cake as you use your hand
to slide down it to get rid of any
creases so always pulling down away and down
from the cake as I go so that the creases actually come
past the edge of the cake so that they're on the cake board itself
as opposed to on the side of the cake that's the trick
just to continue pulling and smoothing down
and this fondant is really stretchy decorator preferred fondant works
really nicely it also drapes really nicely over the cake so it's very very
easy to do this cover rotate the cake as you go
so that you're always able to see the part that you're working on
and just going all the way around pulling it out and smoothing it down
don't worry if you have a a few little lumps we're going to go back with the
smoother
at the and after everything is adhered
so I've gotten almost all the way around and here a lot of people have problems
this is the tricky bit
it's adhered on both sides and then there's this flap it's okay just pull it
out one more time you're going to loosen it a little bit on
either side there from where it was attached and just pull it
again a little bit more so that all of that draping comes
to the bottom of the cake and then over
onto the cake board itself see there's a pleat here
but there's nothing here so now what we want to do is take our smoother
and go all along the top and the sides to get a nice
clean finish and you're going to go all the way to the
cake board here to create a nice
tight adhered fondant
if you get the bubbles in your fondant you can use a pin
to insert a pin at an angle very gently
to release the air and then just smooth back over it
that'll happen once in a while and then I'm going to use my fondant
trimmer here to very
carefully go around the cake
I have one little seam there so I'm just going to go back
and resmooth it out get rid of it
I'm a little bit of a perfectionist and cutaway
the excess fondant as close as you can to where the cake
meets the board
again making sure to turn the cake as you do this so that you can always see
where you're cutting
and I like to do it in smaller portions rather than go all the way around in one
big strip because sometimes the fondant
might stretch you don't want that to happen
so tiny little strips is my preference
and there we go all the extra fondant is off of the cake and just one more time we're
going to go around
if you have any buttercream on your board I have a little bit wipe it up before
you do your final smooth so that you don't get anything
on the side of your fondant
so one final smooth just like that
and there you go that is how you cover a round cake with fondant