Today was the last day of our senior designer. While sad, we wish him the best wishes for his new opportunities. The common office joke is to tell the designers to go play with their crayons… so what better parting gift than a crayon cake.
Due to band commitments, I made the fondant on wednesday night and then starting at 10:30pm on Thursday baked, iced and assembled the cakes. I finished at 1:00pm! While I hate feeling rushed, I’m still happy with the final result and even better Aaron and the rest of the office loved it too.
Warning: There is absolutely nothing healthy and heaps and heaps of nasty stuff in this cake. If you are interested read on 
The base cake is the sponge cake from the dorbos torta recipe. I’m proud to report that I got it perfect this time!
I then rolled it with the chocolate buttercream from the same recipe (again perfect). The tips are icecream cones filled with the remaining sponge and attached with toothpicks. Long wooden skewers or paddle pop stick would be better, but I couldn’t find any. The construction idea is from the wilton website.
I’m not a big fan of fondant (especially the premade stuff), however it was needed for this project so I thought I would try marshmellow fondant. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any butter essence/extract which I think would help smooth out the overwhelming sugar taste. I shrunk the recipe into more manageable and easy to colour segments. The following makes about 370g of fondant.
- 125g marshmellows
- 1/2 tbs water
- 1/4 tbsp glycerine (not 100% necessary)
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 250g of icing sugar plus some spare.
- Copha
- Sift the icing sugar into a large bowl
- In a microwave safe container (I used a blue large tupperware one) add the marshmellows, water, glycerine and vanilla. THIS IS A LOT OF FUN!
- Mix gently
- Microwave 1 min – watch the marshmellows – they expand! Also be careful
- Add food colouring and mix through
- Add the marshmellow mix to the icing sugar and mix with a wooden spoon
- Coat your hands and a surface (that won’t stain) with copha
- Kneed the marshmellow mix into a playdough consistency
- Coat the mashmellow thinly in copha and wrap in cling wrap.
When you are ready to use, microwave for 15seconds. Coat your working surface in copha and roll and manipulate as needed
If I was to do it again, I would probably go for a chocolate sponge and a cream filling to try to counter the sugar taste of the fondant.