Are you ready to domestically shudder?

The elementary school carnival is tonight. It is the biggest fundraiser of the year and the only night when I allow the peeps to "run free" around the school with their friends. That is but one of the many reasons they look forward to the carnival so much. Confetti eggs, dunking friends in the dunking booth, cake walk, winning prizes at all the midway-styled games......pure fun (injected with more than a little sugar from the candy stand).

Each class is required to provide 4 cakes for the bake sale. Each baker is asked to submit a creation with the theme of the carnival in mind. The theme of this year's carnival is Luau. I was asked to make one of the four cakes for Action's class.

So, being the type-A overachiever that I am, I set out to make a really cool gotta-have-it "luau"ish cake. Using fondant.


Which I have never used before.

Hey, I want to try this fondant stuff. The carnival cake would be a perfect time to try it out! What's the worst that could happen?! It wouldn't sell and I would have to bring it home and eat it myself.

That's some good reasonin, right there, tain't it?

So, I watched a few videos on the web about how to use the stuff. I looked at a few cakes from some of the professional bakeries online to get some ideas.

The gals at Pink Cake Box have the cutest cakes and I was hoping to copy one. Maybe like this:


Nothing says luau like a giant hibiscus.


Or something like this from Maui Wedding Cakes:



Hawaiian shirt AND chocolate flip flops!?! GET OUT!

Adequately inspired, I baked the cake and put it in the fridge to cool per the instructions on the videos. I headed to Hobby Lobby for my cake board, cake box and fondant. When I got to Hobby Lobby I realized that I had no idea how much fondant to buy. In the video, they just loped off a big hunk from the 5-gallon sized cylinder. So I just guessed.

From my research, I had already determined that I would buy pre-colored fondant. (I'm not too good at the blending.) I found a pack of fondant that contained 4 neon colors.

It's Luau. Neon is appropriate.

I knew that none of the four colors would individually cover the cake, so I decided to go with a multi-color approach.

Again Luau. Again appropriate.

And with cake design I had in mind, if I ran out of any one color, I could just go back and get some more and stick on there. It's gonna be like playdough, I thought to myself.

I went home ready to cut the cake to the desired shape, knead and roll the fondant, and gently apply it like I was the Queen of Fondant.

All was going well. The fondant was kneading perfectly and rolling into exactly the thickness I wanted without sticking to anything.....not the parchment paper, not the rolling pin.

I was being lulled into a false sense of fondant security.

Suddenly I realized that I covered the cake with the fondant and trimmed it slightly, but hadn't moved it to my cake board. The cake was still on the wax paper on which it cooled. Do you know what happens when cake cools on wax paper?

You got it - it sticks to it.

I sweated the move. Two spatulas and a few contortions, grunts and expletives later, I managed to move the cake to the cake board without incident.

I continued with my efforts, changing the design as I went along due to fondant shortages (naah! Who couldn't see that coming?) and miss cues with cutting the fondant. I also discovered that to acheive my ever mutating design, I needed a teeny flower cookie cutter. The only teeny cookie cutters I have make playing card designs (spade, clubs, diamonds, and hearts). I used the clubs cutter and finally ended up with this:



I pray a photo of this cake doesn't end up here (not that I am a professional by any stretch of the imagination, but she doesn't seem to discriminate. Ugly is ugly.) And please tell me you think this looks like a surfboard and not something else.....like a weird goldfish cracker.