Rolled fondant is one of those things that separates your typical home cook/baker from both the professional baker/confectioner (the kind of person I’ll pay to make my wedding cake) and the emotionally unbalanced artists you see creating 6ft tall, sugar-coated edifices on the Food Network. It turns a simple dessert into something that is both food and art – at once elevating the aesthetic and sacrificing some of the gastronomic quality. It’s what makes people say “ooooooo!”.
It’s that last reaction I was most interested in. Sure, the adventure of it was an attraction. I’m constantly on the lookout for the next culinary challenge, and rolled fondant is nothing if not a challenge. But, in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day, what I wanted most was to create something for my fiancee that would elicit a little bit of awe – that look that says “I can’t believe you did that!”
Curiously, Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day coincide this year. Therefore my creation would be most successful if I were able to marry the two themes into one great looking cake. I went to the Oracle seeking inspiration and the oracle did not disappoint.
Cake
Yellow cake is the vanilla ice cream of cake. Plain, generic, but filled with potential. It can be paired with many things. It’s a good foundation. Best Recipe has a yellow cake recipe that is decent. It requires a significant quantity of butter and eggs, so the recipe is expensive and not entirely healthy (no matter what Bill Cosby might say). Because my fiancee is not a fan of really sweet desserts, I cut back on the sugar and used rum instead of vanilla for flavoring.
Filling
For the Chinese New Year aspect, I wanted to find a filling for the cake that would evoke a typical chinese dessert. Since it’s Valentine’s Day, I wanted something red. I settled on sweet red bean paste. This is something I’ve had before in things like steamed buns and other dim sum-style desserts. It was a good flavor match with the subtle yellow cake and reminded me of something I might have at an upscale Chinese restaurant.
Red bean paste is made very simply. Dried azuki beans (small and red, looking like a cross between a mini kidney bean and a black-eyed pea) are boiled in water until soft. Sugar and a little salt is added. Cooking continues until the paste has absorbed the sugar. For a smooth paste, the mixture can be pureed and the bean skins removed by straining. I preferred an unprocessed, chunky paste for texture. To fill my cake, I mixed a bit of the chunky paste with heavy cream and covered the top of the first cake layer with a thick coating. I then placed the second layer on top of the paste and pressed firmly to make sure the paste would hold the two layers together.
Fondant
A couple of websites recommended making rolled fondant out of marshmellows. According to these sites, this creates a fondant that is much tastier than a traditional, purchased fondant. While this is a good thing, the marshmellow-based fondant suffers from two drawbacks: first, it’s very very sticky, making it difficult to work with. Second, it’s basically a combination of powdered sugar (1.5 to 2 pounds!) and marshmellows, making it extremely sweet. This can completely overwhelm the flavors of a subtle cake (like the red bean cake I made).
Making rolled fondant is like making a lean dough. In this case, the flour is replaced with powdered sugar. Playing the role of the yeast/water mixture is a warm mix of water and melted mini-marshmellows. A significant amount of powdered sugar is added to the melted marshmellow and the mixture is kneaded until it stiffens into an elastic ball that can be rolled out. The initial mixture is a bit like wet rubber cement. It gets on your hands and is impossible to remove. You just have to keep trying to incorporate more powdered sugar. Eventually, it begins to firm up and you can shape it into a ball that can be kneaded like a dough. While kneading, you can add food coloring. I added red color and did not fully incorporate it. The result was a marbled pink and white surface for my cake that was very attractive.
Construction
My layered cake was cut into a simple heart shape. I made buttercream icing (search for “Cake” in this blog to find my icing recipe) and coated the cake to create a sticky surface for the fondant. I’m not sure this step is completely necessary. That, or perhaps I used too much. A small amount of icing would probably have worked. The rolled fondant, maybe 1/8 inch thick, was very heavy and easily stayed in place when spread out over the cake. The benefit of the icing is that is smoothed out the rough corners of my shaped cake and enhanced the heart shape. Trimming the fondant to the bottom edge of the cake was a challenge. This is likely due to the shape. If I had made a perfectly round or square cake, this would have been easier. However, once the fondant was spread over the cake, it was flexible enough to smooth it over the iced surface and create the professional look I was hoping for.
Result
The cake was a success. My adventure was a mixed bag. The fondant recipe is excessive. I may have discarded more fondant than I used, and I didn’t even make a full recipe. It was more like a 2/3 or 3/4 recipe. And while it did elevate the cake from a simple desert to something special, fondant totally throws off the flavor balance. I don’t usually favor appearance over flavor. While it was okay for this occasion, I wouldn’t normally make that choice.
The red bean mixture was simple and effective. I liked it plain, and it was very tasty when mixed with the heavy cream. Azuki beans are easily purchased near my home as I live in close proximity to many Chinese markets.
I’m very glad to have experienced cake-making with rolled fondant. I was a time- and resource-consuming adventure, but and experience that is worthwhile. I feel like a I took a step forward with confectionery, even if it was a step in a direction I’m not likely to follow.