Minnie Mouse Birthday Cake

So, picture the scene, its February and my sister-in-law Leanne asks if I can make her a birthday cake for her in March. I say yes and asks what she would like, she replies with "Surprise me!" and then I spend the next few weeks brainstorming ideas and looking on various sites for inspiration.

Leanne is a fellow Disney fan so the final idea came to me pretty quickly. Something red with polka dots. The problem is... ive NEVER covered a cake in fondant/icing and I really dont know where to start.

So I open up youtube, and watch what seems like a bazillion videos on how to cover a cake, from crumb coating to finishing, and although it looks pretty simple, I know it will be anything but easy!!
I started by ordering some Wilton Colour Gel's from Amazon. I didn't want to buy red icing, I wanted to make it. Id heard horror stories about people using so much red colour that they used a whole bottle. Id also done a bit of research into which colours were the best, Sugarflair, Americolor & Wilton were mentioned a fair bit. I went for Wilton, mainly because the colours I wanted to achieve seemed to get the best results with Wilton.

I then invested in a new rolling pin, a non-stick plastic one from Amazon. Pretty cheap at £9 but quite hefty when it arrived which I was happy with. You can get similar ones from Ebay.

It came to cake day and I was a complete mess, forgot to document the stages with photos and panicked wildly about my icing.

I had nothing to worry about. I used my Ikea baking mat as a cover on my white worktop to kneed the colour into the icing. I didn't need a lot at all. Maybe a 1/4 teaspoon and then I wrapped the icing in cling film and popped it into the fridge to develop the colour. It went to a pillar box red colour which is perfect for what I need.

My cakes were cool at this point, this is the basic recipe I used in my 4" tin.

Ingredients - Cake

• 160g Self Raising Flour
• 160g Caster Sugar
• 160g Butter
• 2 Medium Eggs
• 4tbs Milk
• 2tsp Vanilla Extract

Put all ingredients in a bowl and mix together, no need to sift or mess about! This will make 1 x 6" sandwich tin or a deep 4" cake which you can slice and fill.

I filled and covered my cake with my basic vanilla buttercream recipe...

Ingredients - Vanilla Buttercream

• 400g Icing Sugar (Powered Sugar)
• 200g Butter
• 2tbs Milk
• 2tsp Vanilla Extract

Add more icing sugar if it is too thin or doesn't hold its shape, or add more milk if its too thick. Dont worry if it goes either way, buttercream is very rescuable.

Decorating the Cake

After adding a thin layer of the buttercream to the outside of the filled cake, I let the cake set for a little while, so in the meantime I rolled out my fondant (which i had already coloured and was sitting in the fridge) on my non-slip mat. Using minimal mix of cornflour and icing sugar I rolled out the fondant icing to around half a cm thick. I probably needed it thicker. I laid the fondant over my cake and smoothed out the top using my smoother. Working downwards and in a soft delicate motion I pushed the fondant flat. I had watched a hundred videos on youtube showing this technique and even though I know this helped loads, I still managed a few holes. Thank god for polka dots!!! I attached the bow, which Id made a few days earlier, and the dots with a little water. And then attached the ears which had toothpicks glued inside. I added a thin rope of the red to the bottom to hide the mess and voi la.... my first ever fondant covered cake!!