Hitched bakers - icing question...

When I ice cakes I always use fondant. I find the stuff you roll out yourself from tescos to be very good. Depending on how easy you need it to be, you could ice it wiht buttercream to get the fondant to stick, then lay a white layer of fondant on. Then just cut out the black shapes and place on the cake with either a little bit of edible glue or buttercream to help it stick. You could then use a toothpick or similar to etch the stitching lines in.

I always tend to overbake what i think i need so i can cut off the top if needed so I personally would go with the larger mixture.

Good luck

Carebare

I'd use Madeira rather than vic sponge, tbh, it's a little more robust and copes with being iced better.

White ready-made fondant icing top cover the whole cake, then cut hexagons out from ready-coloured black fondant (buy it from a cake supply place, you need a stupid amount of colour paste (not liquid) to get a true black). Attach hexagons to cake with a little water.

Job done.

Oh, and what the heck is rolled buttercream? Surely one just spreads it?

to clarify, the supermarket box says 'ready to roll icing'.

Thank you lovely ladies - I'm so new to this 'proper' cake making lark and I do tend to panic!

Cath, rolled buttercream is lovely! It's exactly as its name suggests - a buttercream that you can roll. It's slightly softer and much more delicate than fondant but tastes lovely - this is the first proper iced cake I ever made so not quite a perfect finish but you'll see what I mean about the buttercream:

I can't remember the actual recipe but it's icing sugar, butter, golden syrup, salt & vanilla.

Going back to the football, I've always been confused by the sugarpaste v rolled fondant - are they the same thing? My main dislike about the rolled fondant I've used in the past is the lack of taste, is there a brand that's better than others or is there something I do to improve it?

I'm planning to go to our local cake shop at the weekend, I know they sell blocks of coloured icing - thanks for the tip Cath, I wouldn't have thought to buy ready coloured so will cross black colouring off my list and replace with black icing!

Thanks x

I'm a complete beginner baker but I found this Marshmallow Fondant recipe a few weeks ago and it was MUCH easier to make from scratch than regular fondant and much nicer tasting too. Reading through the comments there may be some issues getting a true white though.

http://www.cakejournal.com/archives/how-to-make-marshmallow-fondant

That just seems such a shame - it's the icing that looks nice, takes most of the hard work - why bother doing it if people don't eat it? I'm not keen on buying icing for the same reason, for me it's not a homemade cake if the icing comes in a ready made packet but I'm a bit stuck on both counts with needing it to be white ?

CB the marshmallow fondant sounds lovely, I might try a trial run of that this weekend and see how I get on - is it easy to roll out? Did you get a smooth finish?

If you are set on the buttercream idea then an alternative would be to go for the traditional american wilton star approach - you basically pipe the pattern in small upright star shapes in buttercream

i have a couple of white buttercream recipes that you can colour with candy colourings to a pretty dark black - you wouldnt be able to do the scarf around the bottom

however - from the looks of the rolled buttercream i think it will end up in heartache and disaster if you attempt that design with anything other than sugarpaste

i do have a spherical tin that you could borrow if you like - so you would lose the scarf but gain authentic ballness!

I feel the same way about making my own icing which is why I was soooo excited to find an easier recipe than the Wilton one I was using. The marshmallow fondant was very easy to roll although I've only used it so far to ice cookies so I'm not totally sure if it would be easier to cover a cake. It seemed to be pretty smooth.

Kate