What a post title! And what an adventure it was making that cake!
I made 5 different cakes! Yes, 5! In total the cake took 6 hours from start to finish, a lot of that being baking time. I made a banana cake, 2 strawberry cakes and 2 maple oatmeal cakes. The cakes themselves are completely healthy and made with maple syrup in place of sugar (yay me) and whole wheat flour. The marshmallow fondant icing however could probably kill you. There is about 5 lbs of icing sugar alone in the icing, not including the marshmallows, but it is delicious and the kids don’t mind. Plus, it looks so pretty! Seriously though, that is A LOT of sugar!
I guess that it smells very sweet!
The kids were extremely high for most of the day and went crazy over the icing sugar! They couldn’t keep their hands out of their mouths and Kesa had icing sugar all over her face.
But a birthday only comes once a year! So this was a super sweet treat!
It all started at 10:00am. My helpers were in position and ready to bake!
We started off by making the banana cake.
Whole Wheat Naturally -Sweetened Banana Cake
Makes one 9″ cake
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 3 medium overripe bananas
- 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
- 1/4 cup sunflower oil
- 1/4 cup almond milk (or other non- dairy milk)
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Directions
Preheat oven to 350F. In a medium mixing bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and sea salt. In a separate smaller bowl mash the overripe bananas. Add the maple syrup, sunflower oil, almond milk and vanilla. Whisk until combined and add to the flour mixture. Do not over mix! Pour batter into a lightly greased or non-stick 9″ round cake pan and bake 30 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean when you poke it.
Before this cake was even in the oven, I had lost my helpers. Next, I made a strawberry cake.
Whole Wheat Naturally-Sweetened Strawberry Cake
Makes one 9″ cake
Ingredients
- 2 cups whole wheat flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
- 1/4 cup sunflower oil
- 1 1/2 cups pureed strawberries (I used frozen ones that were thawed)
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350F. Combine the flour and baking powder in a medium mixing bowl. In a smaller mixing bowl, whisk together the maple syrup, sunflower oil, pureed strawberries and vanilla extract. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and stir until just combined. (Do not over mix the batter or it will not rise properly and the cake will end up flat and tough).
Pour the batter into a lightly greased or non-stick 9″ round cake pan.
Bake 30-35 minutes or until golden. The cake is done when you stick a toothpick in it and it comes out clean.
Last, but not least, is my favorite cake of them all! Maple Oatmeal Cake.
Maple Oatmeal Cake
Makes two 4″ round cakes or one 9″ cake*
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups boiling water
- 1 cup rolled oats
Dry
- 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Wet
- 1 cup pure maple syrup
- 1/2 cup sunflower oil
- 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Directions
Place the oats in a medium mixing bowl. Pour the boiling water over top of the oats and let soak for 20 minutes. Once the oats have soaked, preheat the oven to 350F. In another medium mixing bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and sea salt. In separate smaller mixing bowl whisk together the maple syrup, sunflower oil, applesauce and vanilla extract. Add the oats. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Pour the cake batter into a lightly greased or non-stick 4″ round cake pan. Bake 35-40 minutes, until golden and when poked with a toothpick, the toothpick comes out clean.
* If instead, you are making a 9″ round cake, you may have to bake it a little longer.
YUM!
Now it was time to make the marshmallow fondant, AKA the messy part.
Marshmallow Fondant
Makes enough fondant to cover a 3 layer, 9″ cake and some extra for side decorations
Ingredients
- 450 grams (16 oz) vegan mini marshmallows*
- 3 tablespoons water
- 1/2 cup vegetable shortening
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (or other flavor extract of your choice)
- 2 lbs icing sugar
*Dandies makes a good vegan marshmallow and that is what I use, but it can get pricey depending on the size of cake that you are making. Here is a link to where you can order them from. I got mine at an Organic Store.
Directions
Place the marshmallows in a large microwave safe dish along with the 3 tablespoons of water and microwave for 1 minute and 30 seconds.
The marshmallows should come out all gooey. If they aren’t quite gooey when you stir them, return them to the microwave another 10-20 seconds.
In a large bowl, mix together the shortening, vanilla and the 2 lbs of icing sugar. Add the marshmallow mixture.
Stir.
Keep stirring… you can clean up the mess later. 😉
Stir until all of the icing sugar is incorporated and the icing begins to resemble a soft dough.
Then it is time to get your hands in there and start kneading! Knead the icing sugar on an icing sugar dusted surface or in the mixing bowl until smooth and no longer sticky. If the icing is still sticky, add more icing sugar.
Next add your color. Place the fondant back into the large bowl and add food coloring. Mix until combined. You will have to get your hands in there to knead the color in as well. Add more icing sugar if the fondant becomes too wet and sticky. Update: A great brand of icing colors is Wilton. They make a concentrated gel so you only need a dab of color and you won’t need to add more icing sugar to the fondant because it won’t get too wet and sticky.
Keep on kneading until the color in fully incorporated and the fondant is smooth. You don’t want to have any color that is not combined when you roll out your fondant, it wouldn’t be pretty. If your fondant becomes too dry you can add a tablespoon or so of water to it. If it is too hard, you can always soften it up later by microwaving it for 10-20 seconds.
At this point, you can grease your fondant with a bit of shortening and place your fondant in a Ziploc bag or wrap it in cling wrap. This icing can be made far in advance and keeps well in the fridge for up to a week if tightly wrapped. When you are ready to use your fondant, simply heat it in the microwave for a 10-20 seconds (longer if you have a lot of fondant, but not too long or it will melt and create a very sticky mess). I wrap mine even if I am using it the same day and keep it wrapped until I need to use it because the air does dry it out.
Now it is back to the cake! Place one of the cakes (layer one) onto a cake stand and spread with icing or jam. I used strawberry jam.
Place the next cake on top. Spread on more jam. Repeat until you have all of your cake layers stacked.
I originally thought that I would just do the two layers and I spread the icing onto the cake, but then decided that I needed more height so I added the final 9″ cake and ended up having to make even more fondant since I had already put my fondant over the icing (oops)!
Next you would spread the cake with an icing so that you fill in the gaps between the cakes and have something for the fondant icing to stick to.
I made a strawberry icing for this cake.
Simply Sweet Strawberry Icing
Makes approximately 3 cups of icing
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup margarine
- 2 1/2 cups icing sugar
- 2 tablespoons almond milk (or other non-dairy milk)
- 1/4 cup pureed strawberries
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Directions
In a mixing bowl, combine the margarine and icing sugar together. Add the milk, berries and vanilla extract. Beat until smooth and thick. If the icing is too thin, add more icing sugar until you reach your desired thickness.
Once you have spread your cake with the icing, roll out the fondant color that you are using to cover the entire cake to the appropriate size. You want to make sure that you have enough to cover the circumference of your cake and the height of your cake as well so measure accordingly. I made my cake 3 layers high so I had quite a difficult time rolling it out large enough to cover the cake and draping it over the rolling pin to place on the cake. It took me about 6 tries before I could finally get it to work. YOU DO NEED A FONDANT ROLLING PIN FOR THIS! Saying a prayer might also help. It can get pretty frustrating.
Roll the fondant icing over the edge of your rolling pin and carefully drape the icing over the cake. Sometimes, if there are too many imperfections (stretches, little holes or wrinkles) in the fondant icing, I make more and double the fondant layer over the cake to make it look more smooth.
Cut off the excess fondant with a knife along the edge of the cake and smooth the fondant out with your hands or a fondant smoother (a fancy tool that has really come in handy).
Next you can make your shapes! I used heart and flower shaped fondant cutters to create strawberries for the sides of the cake. You can use cookie cutters too. Roll out the fondant and cut the shapes that you desire.
Stick your fondant shapes onto the side of your cake.
Keep on decorating your cake as you desire. I added white dots to the strawberries for seeds and also made some white strawberry blossoms to go on the side as well. The top layer of the cake I covered in white fondant and cut out red and green circular shapes to go on the sides. I also decided to cut out some longer strips of pink icing to make a ribbon for the top layer and twisted together some green fondant to cover up any imperfections where the cakes meet and add even more decoration. I put one of the girls pink beaded necklace along the bottom to make it even prettier and cover up any minor imperfections..
I used all 6 characters from Strawberry Shortcake. On the top we have Lemon Meringue, Blueberry Muffin and Strawberry Shortcake.
And on the bottom layer we have Plum Pudding, Orange Blossom and Raspberry Torte. I know my Strawberry Girls!
And that is my amazing vegan fondant cake adventure! All in one incredibly long blog post! I hope that this helps somebody. I am not a professional by any means and know nothing about cake decorating. I just decided to google this one day for Autumn’s 5th birthday and watched a few youtube tutorials. If I can do it, you can too! It is a lot of hard work, makes for a lot of dishes as well as sticky floor mess and takes FOREVER, but it is all worth it when you see your child smile.
I am going to have 3 little girls to make cakes for soon. That’s three cakes/year. I might get pretty pro at this so who knows, maybe someday I could make a cake for you. 😉
Kesa had a great party yesterday with family and she was very happy.
(Kesa with Autumn and her cousin Becca)
She got a cake of her own to decorate any way she wants and some Melissa and Doug wooden cookies to bake.
The cookies are really neat because they have their own baking sheet, oven mitt and everything! You can change the icing on them too. The girls are having a lot of fun with this.
She also got some Melissa and Doug wooden dress up dolls.
The cake not only looked amazing, but it tasted amazing too! I think this is my best cake yet!
I may or may not have eaten a huge piece or two. One for myself and one for the baby. 😉
And as always, after a birthday party we were all wiped! We had cake for a snack and went off to bed. It was a wonderful day!
That is so cute and looks berry delicious. 🙂
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🙂
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OMG!!! Wow!! You did an awesome job. I would so love to make a cake like this for my kids. One thing I was thinking about….i really dont want to use food coloring…..is there another healthy alternative out there??
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Thanks Tammy! I am not sure about alternatives to food coloring. That is something definitely worth investigating.
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Try taking a look into India Tree Natural Decorating Colors. They are food coloring made from concentrated vegetable juices. I haven’t tried them yet because they are expensive, $25 – $30 for a set of 3 (red, yellow, blue).
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Tammy, I have a friend who made red colouring using beetroot, I think she found the instructions online-good luck!
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A good all-natural food coloring is Seelect Tea food coloring, here is the link…
http://www.seelecttea.com/flavors/organic-natural-colors/natural-colors.html
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You can make your own food colourings using fruits, veggies and spices but the colours are no where near as vibrant and you risk ending up with a funny tasting cake. For example tumeric makes a great yellow but you don’t really want a tumeric flavoured cake.
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Those cakes look awesome!! And your girls just could not be any cuter
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Thanks!
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That is the most incredible home made cake I have ever seen!!!! You are amazing Tiffany:-) thank you for the wonderful cake recipes, I will try those for sure, do you normally decorate those in any way or are they nice just as they come? Thankyou
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Thank you! Those cakes are fantastic as is! You could even make muffins or quick breads with those recipes. Muffins are usually ready in 20-25 minutes. The banana one makes a great quick bread and is actually what I use for banana bread. Just bake it 40-45 minutes in a 9X5 loaf pan, same for the strawberry. The oatmeal one may take longer to bake. You will know when it is ready if you poke it with a knife or toothpick and it comes out clean. 🙂
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Thanks for the extra tips:-) must do some baking this weekend!
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WOW! I have thought about taking a cake decorating class at the local craft store, but I had my reservations because the ingredients we would be using would not be vegan. I think that this fondant recipe is amazing! thanks for sharing 🙂
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You’re Welcome! 🙂
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That cake looks amazing! Hopefully mine can come out that attractive, I’m not very creative but I’ll give it a try! Thanx for the recipe, my daughter is very excited n so am I.
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Thanks Michelle! Let me know if you have any questions. Good luck! 🙂
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Your cake looks amazing ! Love the decoration !!! May I ask where did you find the little dolls on the top of the cake? My daughter likes blue and she wants a blueberry muffin party and I can’t find anything about it !
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Thanks! We found those little dolls at Superstore and some just at our local pharmacy and bargain store. I am not sure if they make them anymore though, I haven’t seen them around in a while. I made this cake over a year ago now. 🙂
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The cake really is amazing! And she is too cute!!
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Thank you.
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I’m a vegan.
Do you have the entire recipe of fondant so that I don’t even need to buy the marshmallows?
Looking forward to a positive reply.
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The fondant that I make for cakes is a marshmallow fondant. That is the only recipe that I use. Sorry.
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Substitute for maple syrup
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Strawberry cake? Oh I’m there! I love the strawberry jam between the layers.
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Hi, I was wondering how the recipe for the marshmallow fondant is, does the fondant taste nice? This recipe seems shorter than most, why is that there is no agar agar (vegan gelatine powder)
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Hi Ashia! The recipe tastes really good, like marshmallows. The agar agar is not needed. The fondant is thick enough as is and dries well too. Hope you enjoy it! 🙂
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What a lucky kid! You rock.
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Hi, a friend sent me your MMF recipe and after seeing how easy it looked (and how beautiful the cakes look) I am all set to try it. Other MMF recipes say it is important to use a clear-colored extract for flavoring or the fondant will not be pure white (before/if you color it). You didn’t specify that in your recipe; did you not find it to be an issue? I’d love to not have to buy another bottle of extract since my vanilla is not clear! Thanks!!
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Hi Monique! The vanilla has never showed up as colorful at all in my white icing before (as you can see). I am sure you will be alright! Maybe that is for cakes that are meant to be especially fancy, like for a wedding perhaps and not exactly 100% white? I think our white icing always looks white. 🙂
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Thank you for replying! I’m going to attempt to make Olaf from Frozen so I definitely need a very white fondant. Since I’m following your recipe, then hopefully it will be fine 🙂
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Maybe it also depends on how much extract the recipe calls for in proportion to the rest of the fondant ingredients? If there were to be a lot of extract, then maybe it would be more of an issue. Hope that helps you. 🙂
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Hi Tiffany,
I think your blog and cakes are absolutely genius! I visited last year to walk me through my sons 2nd birthday cake which we created with a Finding Nemo theme. It came out fabulously. I did question whether or not to refrigerate, which I am also wondering again this year. I’m making a three part cake to travel to three separate families. This year Alden wants Mickey Mouse, so conveniently his face and two ears work out perfectly. I’ll be making it tonight and we will be eating it through out the weekend. These will be vegan cakes (Colleen Patrick-goudreau recipes) and I’d love to hear your thoughts on storing it. I know fondant tends to dry out and I’d like it to stay as scrumptious as possible. Tips?
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Can you use coconut oil in the fondant in place of shortening?
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Hi! I have never tried, but I am thinking that it would work out alright. 🙂
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Thank you so much for this detailed recipe. Loved making fondant using your basic instructions!
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Thanks for trying it out and coming back to comment!
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Looks great, I think I will try the banana cake – my son is having a camping bday party tomorrow and I was looking for vegan marshmallow icing to put on a chocolate cake. We have so many guests coming I need a second kind of cake so banana it is!
Be careful with food dyes, some are not vegan, and all are tested on animals 😦 Natural dye works great though, pomegranate for pink!
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Great recipe! The vegan marshmallows work really well! http://wychburyave.com/2016/01/12/star-wars-the-cake-awakens/
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Glad that it worked out for you! 🙂
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I am going to use this fondant recipe to make fondant for the first time for my daughters birthday cake. I don’t have a microwave though so I will have to do it another way! Hoping it works
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Good luck! I hope that it works out for you! 🙂
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How far in advance may I make the fondant? My kid’s party is the day after Thanksgiving, so I am juggling some things in my little kitchen to make Pichachu come to life 🙂
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Hi Amy! I think it should be fine to make it a week or a few days in advance. You can even store it unrefrigerated just make sure that it is well wrapped so that it doesn’t dry out. If you do put it in the fridge make sure you leave it at room temperature or microwave it just slightly to make it warm up before you roll it out. I hope that your cake turns out great! If you’re fondant seems a bit dry, try adding a bit of shortening to it. Good luck!
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Omg! I have read this post every September for the past three years…I will finally brave the marshmallow fondant cake – I’m doing a test bake on the strawberry right now! I’m so excited to make my daughter an intricate birthday cake (I usually end up making a simple cake or some cupcakes). This year she will get a pink and white teddy bear cake! With fondant strips and polka dots! I’m so glad you took the time to make this loooong and amazingly detailed post!
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Hi Danielle! That sounds great! 🙂 I’m glad you’re going to give it a try! I’m glad this post has been inspiring and helpful to you!
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