Today I am making the cake for Rylan's class Christmas party that is Tomorrow. I will be posting as I go today a little "How To" on making a cake that looks expensive but is actually fun and inexpensive. I purchased all of my ingredients first which include, fondant (you can get this at Walmart now or at a craft store like Hobby Lobby) I buy the big pack which is around 18.00 but it lasts a long time and it will make multiple cakes, you can purchase a box which is only a pound of fondant for around 6.00 and that will make one cake and you may have a little left over. Then you need to get the color for the fondant (unless you buy the precolored but that is more expensive) they are about 2.00 each and I already had red so all I needed was green. Then I got my cake mix (2 boxes) and my icing (2 cans) I am cheating this time and doing my cake the easy way lol. I usually don't use all of the two icings but I would always rather have too much than not enough. I also use melted white almond bark (you get this in the baking section for making chocolate covered pretzels and all) to "glue" on any decorations that I will add.
So now that I have all of my ingredients I will bake my cakes according to the instructions on the box or recipe. While the cakes are baking I will make a template for what I want the cake to look like. Today since it is for the sweet baby Jesus I will be making a cross cake with red and green decorations. I took two pieces of paper and taped them together to get the shape I wanted for the cross. When the cakes come out I will place the paper on top of the cake to cut the cake and make the shape using any knife that will cut cake really.... I learned from my friend Courtney how to make the cake even on the top, you know how when you bake a cake it puffs up on the top well if you are using fondant you want your cake to be flat and level on top so what you will want to do is take a string (I use one from my sewing kit that is clean) and pull it tight then move the string across the cake top to trim off the puff, the string will go through the cake like melted butter you will be so surprised. Then after you are sure your cake is cooled off you will begin icing it. I like to bake two smaller/thinner cakes and put icing in the middle of the two, I don't know if everyone does the same thing or not but I think this makes it a little better :) Now comes my confession about using fondant... The reason I love it is because I don't have to try and make my icing look pretty lol I can slap it on and it will be covered by beautiful flat fondant! This is what it looks like right now, remember I made two layers of cake, this was baked in a 11x15 cake pan one layer at a time, icing between the layers and then on top and around edges. Now I will work on rolling out the fondant and getting it to a thinness that I like. You want it not so thin that it will rip when you move it but not so thick that you are
wasting it. If you use a dust of flour on your counter top it will help to keep it from sticking. I used a rolling pin to make it thin then I rolled it on the rolling pin until it was wrapped around itself and I could easily roll it onto the iced cake. I used a knife to trim off the edges and if you can see on the left arm of the cross I accidentally ripped it. I took fondant and colored it using the colors I bought. The color is like a gel and you only need a tiny bit (you can always add more for a more intense color but it is hard to go back). Once you add the color you will kneed the fondant or what I do is pull it apart and smash it back together until it is a consistent color (not streaky at all) this doesn't take long depending on how much fondant you are coloring. I wanted to make circles (I actually made around 100 little balls that looked like red hots with red color but decided to smash them and just make big and small circles instead) I used a juice glass and a saki shot glass to make perfect (ish) circles all over. I used the top and bottom of both glasses to make different sizes. I used red and green fondant and mixed and matched all over, the great thing about decorations is that they help cover any mistakes that you might have made, I used a portion 
of a circle to cover the ripped portion of the left arm, I was super excited with the finished product and I couldn't wait to share with the class, teachers, and other parents. It was a hit and everyone was talking about it and that always makes you feel good when everyone likes what you make. They also wanted to know what kind of cake and icing I used and were all saying how moist and delicious it was! I hope you try to make your own cake and it comes out to be a success as mine was :)
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