My first fondant fancies

Earlier this month, we went to visit some friends in their new house, and as they'd helped me out with some graphic design earlier in the year, I'd promised them some cake. I usually bake cupcakes, but this time I wanted to try something new. 

Earlier this year, I enjoyed watching the latest series of the Great British Bake Off, and one of the challenges in the final was fondant fancies. Even though the technique they used for the icing looked a bit faffy (slightly dissolving a block of fondant icing so it became runny), I decided I'd really like a go at making my own, and when the GBBO book came out, I just had to try the recipe for the fondant fancies.

The recipe is for a delicious orange and cardamom flavoured cake with a delicately flavoured orange icing. I'd never made a genoise cake before, and other than the time it takes to get the eggs nice and fluffy, it was pretty simple to do. I ended up with a few lumps of flour because I disobeyed one of the instructions, but they weren't noticeable to eat, and I've learnt my lesson to follow the recipe more closely!

The cake was made on a Friday evening, as I'd read a tip from Mary Berry on the BBC Food website to make the cake the night before so it was less crumbly. I then prepared the marzipan for the top in the morning, and iced on Saturday afternoon. The only trouble I had was I made the icing slightly too runny. This meant that once it had dripped off, it was quite thin and you could see the cake through it. Next time I will trust a thicker icing to spread over the cake more slowly.

My little fondant fancies iced and ready to go.

But, once they were in their paper cases, packed in to a box (12 of these fit perfectly into a 6 cupcake box without the holder in), they look really lovely.

All boxed up and ready to go!

The basic recipe seems like it would be easy to adapt to other flavours, and I'm already planning my next batch. Watch this space...