Diet Friendly Valentines Brownie Kabob
No Bake Nutella Cheesecakse
No Bake Chocolate Eclair
Nutella Stuffed Chocolate Chip cookies
Fried Fruit Pies
No Sugar Oat Drops
Just a quick tutorial for this 4” Tiffany box mini cake, by request.
1. Make the lid at least two days in advance to allow it to dry. I thought of all the ways I could make the lid but in the end, as this was such a small cake, it seemed easiest to make a hollow lid.
2. I had a box that had a lid of exactly the right size. I’ve also seen gift boxes of the right in the dollar store (yes, I go there to buy rolls of shelf-liner to make a non-stick base in my cake boxes) so you should be able to pick up a box of the right size in the gift-wrap section. I use this method for larger lids too, but normally leave the cardboard lid inside.
3. Colour your fondant with a few drops of Wilton Teal gel colour until you have the shade you want. This was a quick job and I only needed to adjust the shade a little darker once. Be careful though, as the colour seems to darken and intensify once you stop kneading. Stop when the colour is lighter than you think it has to be.
4. Roll a piece of fondant large enough to cover your real box lid. Not too thin, as you want the fondant to be able to support its own weight. About 1/8” thick is perfect.
5. Dust your real box lid with cornstarch or powdered sugar and lay your fondant over the top. It’s tricky to form the shape as the fondant moves around because of the cornstarch, but persevere. Pinch the corners together and then snip them off vertically with some sharp scissors.
6. Once the corners are snipped off, you may need to smooth them down a little.
7. Trim off the excess fondant around the edges to create a neat box shape. Carefully slide a sharp knife between the fondant and the sides of the box to just ensure it’s not sticking. Leave it to dry with the box still inside for as long as you can.
8” CAKE NOTE: I used the above method for my lid and it worked perfectly. I used Wilton fondant without Tylose and used an 8” square cake board inside the lid to support it and left it on when I added it to the finished cake. I didn’t use the ‘pinch and snip’ method for the lid, I smoothed it as if I was covering a square cake.
Note: You can try using gumpaste for this, obviously, as long as you’re able to get an exact match to the colour of the fondant you use for the cake part. I tried adding Tylose to my fondant, but it was Satin Ice and it just cracked as soon as I tried to fold it over the lid. If you’re using any other brand of fondant, it might be worth a try. I don’t recommend trying this with the softer fondants like Fondarific/Duff or FondX unless you can add Tylose powder to make it harden.
8. Make the now world famous Royal Bakery bow! :-) Tutorial here:
Leave the bow to dry along with the lid.
9. Tort and fill your 4” cake. Mine was 3” high. I used ganache to make it super-sturdy and smooth and used the upside down method that I love. Ganache was really the secret to getting the straight sides and sharp-ish edges.
This tutorial doesn’t show you how to ganache a square cake, but the method is pretty much the same.
10. Try your hardest to ensure your cake measures 4” at the bottom as well as the top (or whatever size you’re doing)! I had do a few more sweeps with my bench scraper to get it just right. It makes getting the fondant on so much easier.
11. I rolled out my fondant for covering the sides of the cake about 1/8” thick. I used a single strip that would wrap all the way around the sides. For this cake the fondant was 4 x 4” = 16” long and 3” high (the height of my cake). I didn’t bother covering the top as I knew it would be covered with fondant tissue paper later.
8” CAKE NOTE: I used four panels of fondant for the larger cake which ran from the middle of each side, around the corner to the middle of the next side. This way, each join was covered by the ribbon and there were no edges to be seen at the corners.
12. Lightly but thoroughly moisten the ganache on your cake. Any places you miss with water or Crisco (which is what I use) are apt to form air bubbles. I either wet my hands with water and rub all over the surface, or rub with Crisco… just a very light coating. You don’t want water dribbing out from under your fondant.
13. Cornstarch your strip and roll it up around a small rolling pin to allow you to transfer it to the cake and to help it to keep its shape. Make sure the bottom of the rolling pin doesn’t stick out. You want the edge of your fondant to be able to touch the turntable and not the rolling pin.
Note: If you use stupid Satin Ice fondant, moisten your cake FIRST and then roll out your fondant. The longer your Satin Ice is left rolled out before applying it to the cake, the more likely it is to crack at the corners. I used Satin Ice and, because I know how horrible it is, had the stuff rolled, cut and ready to apply in about 4 seconds. :-)
14. Place the edge of your fondant strip in the middle of the back of your cake. The join will be covered with a ribbon, so this is the best place to start. Unroll your strip around the sides of the cake, pressing firmly as you go with the flat of your hand. When you reach the back again, you might have to trim some excess fondant off due to stretching as you went around. Leave this for now and concentrate on your corners first. Especially if it’s Satin Ice!
15. Using a fondant smoother, smooth the sides of your box. If you have two, butt them up against each other at the corners to give you lovely sharp edges.
16. Go back and trim off any excess fondant you have at the join. This doesn’t have to be neat, but don’t overlap as it will show underneath the ribbon later.
17. If you have excess fondant at the top of your cake you can slice this off with a sharp blade or, if it’s not too much, leave it.
18. When the fondant on the main cake is nice and dry and firm, you can apply your ribbons to the sides. The way my ribbons are laid out makes no logical sense, but my friend asked for the Tiffany logo and the bow, so the only way I was going to do that was to put the bow off-centre and the logo in the corner. But I still wanted the ribbons on the main cake to be centred, so that’s how I did it. In fact, once the lid is on, it sort of all lined up, although I know it makes no sense. You’re welcome to make more sense with yours!
19. Cut the ribbons from very thin fondant, about 3/4” wide and as high as your cake. I sprayed mine with pearl lustre spray before applying to the cake, so be careful you don’t transfer the sparkle to everything you touch. When applying the ribbon, make sure the bottom is flush with the bottom of the cake. This is harder than it looks and the ribbon at the back had a tiny gap that drove me crazy!
Getting the ribbons straight isn’t easy, especially when I roll my fondant so thin. Can’t really give you any tips, other than as soon as the ribbon is on, use the back of a knife to gently nudge it into place.
20. With any luck, a few days have passed now and you can check your lid. Fingers crossed that you can just ease the real lid out and the fondant lid should be nice and dry and stand up on its own. Replace the real lid back inside though so you have some support for the next step.
21. Now’s the time to draw on the logo and discover that you have the world’s shakiest hands. I measured the area I had for the writing, taking into account the position of the ribbons I would add later, and printed a logo to the right size. I used two pieces of opaque tape (check somewhere non-critical that it sticks, but not for good!) to mark out the height on my letters and to tape the printed logo to the fondant above wher you’re going to write. I used this as a guide as I was writing.
22. I used a brand new edible ink pen so that I could ensure the sharpest tip possible and just went for it. Very scary and there are some dodgy letters, but it looks OK overall.
23. Now add your ribbons to the lid of the box and your super-awesome Royal Bakery bow. My bow was stupid because the swags stuck out into mid-air as I’d dried them with the bow. If you have any sense (not like me) make your swags fresh, don’t leave them to dry. :-)
Note: I make my swags in advance now and freeze them on parchment paper in an airtight container until needed. Leave them to thaw for 10 minutes before you use them to avoid fingerprints.
24. I now added a layer of fondant tissue paper to the top of my box. It took about five pieces to cover all the edges. Roll out a ball of white fondant very thin and just fold and crease it carefully to make the tissue paper.
25. Now decide on the position of your lid, taking into account any rings or other jewels you might be adding. I wanted the back of my lid to be raised up slightly so the bow and logo were easily visible, so I cut a sqaure from a rice crispy treat and placed it on top of the tissue paper. This also added a bit of support to the lid. I covered it with more tissue paper. Keep adding more until you’re happy with the look.
26. I attached the lid by moistening the edges and also the top of the tissue-paper covered rice crispy treat and pressing down gently. It was pretty stable.
27. I attached a little tag with a message imprinted with a little letters. I bought the kit on ebay from Malaysia. It was super-cheap. Great way of adding a message to small cake. Search Google for ‘Brigitte Keks.’
That’s it! Hope it useful, please ask if I can help.
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