Giant Zesty Lemon Fondant Fancy

I think I’ve found my new favourite cake (I’m also sure I’ve said this before!) No, seriously, I made a discovery yesterday that will change my ‘go-to’ cake whenever I have to take a cake somewhere.

The Lemon Fondant Fancy is one of those cakes that looks impossible to do but is really quite easy. It does help that the base cake is only 6″ square so when it comes to covering it, it isn’t too difficult to get neat.

I made the buttercream (for the bump) with more icing sugar than usual to make it extra hard. I was worried that with it being so hot at the moment, the weight of the covering might squash it down. But that didn’t happen.

I did cover the cake and the bump with marzipan before covering with the yellow fondant icing as I love the taste of marzipan and I wanted a really neat finish. I suppose if you didn’t like the taste of marzipan, a thicker covering of just fondant would do just as well.

The recipe is the brainwave of Jini Mulukutla, who I will try to have interviewed in the next few days. Jini’s recipe says to spread lemon curd in the centre of the cake and to stick the fondant down with the curd also. I was lucky enough to be sent some marmalades and jams from the lovely people at Mackays last month though, and wanted to see what would happen if I used marmalade instead. I thought that maybe it would be too tangy – I think I had convinced myself from being a child that marmalade was too bitter a taste. How wrong I was! It added just the perfect zesty taste. I am definitely going to be using marmalade as a substitute for spreading jam on a cake from now on. I also have another marmalade recipe coming up in a couple of days … watch this space!

We had some very tasty looking bakes from our last Cake-a-long – The Torta Columbina Cake.
Victoria Murray gave us this very neat example.

Rhonda Kirby gave hers a bit of bling with some purple sprinkles

Rhonda’s sparkly Torta Columbina

Katy Hough had so much more success with her sugar topping than I did.

Katy’s tasty looking Torta Columbina

And last but not least is Cassandra’s delicious looking bake. Cassandra forgot to put on her topping and sugar beads. I love this as that is just the sort of thing I do. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to put a cake in the oven to find I’ve forgotten to add sugar or eggs!

Our bake for the next fortnight (and I promise it will be a fortnight) is the Father’s Day Spiced Ale Cake. This is my lovely friend, Deb Connor’s cake and I’ve actually tasted this cake. Hope I can do it justice when I bake it for Dermot for Father’s Day this weekend. I will be back with the roundup and the next bake on Monday 24th June. Happy Baking!