hey everyone and welcome back
to my channel Cakes by MK in today's video i'm going to be showing you guys
how to beautifully cover a cake in fondant and i'm going to be sharing with you guys two different
ways to achieve those nice sharp edges on the top now before we get into it a quick shout out
to today's sponsor Squarespace. If you've never heard about Squarespace before they are an amazing
website builder with the most gorgeous templates stay tuned to learn more about them later on
in this video as well as how you can get 10% off your first Squarespace purchase. If you're
new to my channel welcome and if you enjoy this video please give it a thumbs up below.
Apart from that let's get right into this video so the first thing you want to do is prepare your
fondant so that it's ready to roll. So today i'll be using this homemade marshmallow fondant which
is fresh so it's already nice and soft for me to use, i'll post a link to this recipe below, but if
you're using a ready-made fondant - this one here is the Pettinice brand, then it's most likely going
to be quite firm and you're going to have to knead it until it becomes soft and pliable so that you
can actually roll it out. So as you can see here before i knead it it breaks really easily and just
isn't that soft doughy consistency that we need so when kneading the fondant the best way to do
this is to use the palm of your hands. By doing it this way it allows you to put more pressure
on the fondant without tiring your hands out and this is especially important when kneading
large batches of ready-made fondant because it can be quite a workout so you want to get it
done in the easiest way possible. So you just want to knead away until it becomes like a doughy but
still slightly firm consistency. Now when kneading your fondant if it feels quite dry and it's just
not becoming soft then you can add some shortening to the fondant and just knead that in and
alternatively if your fondant is too soft and kind of sticking everywhere then you can just sprinkle
some corn flour or even icing sugar on the surface that you're kneading it on and even add some of it
to your fondant itself and knead that in as well these variations in fondant consistency can occur
depending on the climate that you're staying in okay so because i'll be covering a round cake i'm
going to start off by getting my fondant as round as possible before i start rolling it out. So to
roll out my fondant i've got a fondant roller here but you can also use a regular rolling pin
and then the cake i'm going to be covering is a six inch three layer ganache cake. Keep in
mind that the frosting on your cake needs to be really firm when covering it with fondant
and i find ganache works the best and it doesn't become soft too quickly either so it allows
you more time to kind of work with your fondant now to roll out my fondant i just sprinkled some
cornflour on my table and then i'm rolling out the fondant on there so that it doesn't stick to my
table i'm just going in a simple back and forth motion here and then i flip my fondant around
and do the same thing to create a large circle so the key here is to roll out your fondant so
that it's large enough to cover your cake entirely with some excess. It's always better to have too
much fondant than two less. Now you can measure your cake out and then measure your fondant as
you're rolling it out to make sure your fondant is large enough but i tend to only do this for larger
cakes because that's when i tend to kind of get it wrong and roll it out too small. Now sometimes when
rolling out fondant air bubbles can appear and you want to pop these using a sharp tip like i have
here, you can also use a toothpick for this. Now my fondant doesn't actually have any which is great
but just to demonstrate let's pretend that that was an air bubble so you just want to pop it and
then re-roll that area so that it smoothens out so this is the kind of thickness
that you want your fondant to be so you don't want it too thin otherwise it may
break but you don't want it too thick either so what i'm doing next is rolling the fondant
onto my roller and putting that aside while we work on our cake. So to help the fondant stick
to my cake i'm just applying some shortening all over my ganache and then i'm going
to slowly unroll my fondant over my cake now what i like to do to prevent
the fondant from breaking at the top is when i'm halfway there i start applying a
little bit of pressure on the top edges that are covered with fondant so that it sticks to the
cake and then finish with the rest of the cake next i immediately start smoothing
out the top with my fondant smoother and if you notice that your fondant
smoother is kind of sticking to your fondant then just sprinkle some more corn
flour on your fondant and then smooth it out then after that i quickly start securing the
top edges of my fondant so that there isn't too much pressure weighing the fondant down and
this will prevent the top edges from ripping now when doing this just be careful
because if you're rough like me then you can rip your fondant like i have here
but don't worry if you get a little rip like that you can always fix it up by just
pressing some of the surrounding fondant together to cover it up and then smooth
it out later with your fondant smoother next i'm starting to cover all the sides with
fondant by gently spreading out sections of the fondant and then using my hands to stick
the fondant to the cake and you just want to repeat this process around the entire
cake until it's fully covered in fondant now once the cake is covered you want
to use an exacto knife or something sharp to cut off the excess fondant
from around the bottom of the cake now once that's done i'm just going
to use my fondant scraper to gently push some of the fondant down and
then clean that up again with my exacto blade so that the fondant is
nice and flush with the cake board and then once that's done it's time to work on
our sharp edges. Now before we get into the two different ways to achieve those nice sharp edges
on the tops of your fondant cakes i'm just going to take a quick break to talk to you guys a bit
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apart from that let's get back to those sharp fondant edges. So the first method i'm going to
show you guys is by using two fondant smoothers. So what you want to do is hold one of the smoothers
up against the side of the cake and then use the other one to start gently pushing the fondant
on the top of the cake into the fondant smoother you're holding on the side and this will start
to create a sharp edge on the top of your cake so just keep moving your fondant scrapers around
the top edge of the cake to create that sharp edge so i've done half of the cake now and you can
see there's a nice sharp edge on half of the cake now the next method i'm going to show
you guys is to flip your cake over and then once it's securely on the table
you're working on you want to go ahead and gently remove the cake board, i'm just
using an offset spatula here to do that, and then once that's off you want to grab your
fondant smoother and start gently pushing the fondant down so that the edges are touching
the surface you're working on and you're kind of just getting rid of that little shadow on
the bottom. As you're doing this you may notice that in places where your fondant is thicker you
may have some excess fondant that appears on the bottom like i do here and we'll just clean that
up again with our exacto knife once we're done and then once that's done you just
want to flip your cake over again and place it where you want i'm putting mine back onto my cake board and then you just want to
finish off by smoothing everything out again and once you're happy with how
everything is looking you're left with a beautiful fondant
cake that is ready to decorate so that is it guys that is how you beautifully
cover a cake in fondant and how you get those nice sharp edges on the tops as well. I hope
these tips and tricks were helpful for you guys, thank you so much for watching Cakes by MK and i'll see you guys in the next video
