The Challenge:
Make N fondant fancies
What Happened?
When I was kid in the UK our parents used to buy fondant fancies fairly regularly. You got 8 in a box. There were 3 pink, 3 chocolate and 2 yellow (lemon? – who knows). Me and my 2 brothers were entitled to 2 each. Now because there were only 2 of the yellow ones they acquired that air of rare specialty. So between us we would fight as to who was getting the yellow ones this week and who was going to have to lump it with a chocolate one (we all got 1 pink). Frankly they probably all actually tasted pretty much the same but the chocolate one seemed so oridinary compared to the pink and yellow so they were allways the bottom of the pecking order.
The commercial ones consisted of a little square of sponge up on which sat a little dome of some sort of creme. The whole thing was then covered in a layer of colored fondant and a few parallel lines of icing. The ones we’ve been tasked with are going to be similar apart from a jam sandwich layer in the middle and no creme blob on top. There is also going to be thin buttercream layer on the outside and the fondant will be plain white. Specifically it is something called pate a glace which is something I’ve never heard of so another learning experience
First up we bake a cake. Then we make a french butter cream. Then, when the cake is done we do a bunch of careful measuring and cutting to assemble perfect little cubes. And yes, again, we used pre-made jam to sandwich the layers together. Once we’ve got all these buttercream covered cubes ready, it’s time to glaze. This is the trickiest bit. The temperature is absolutely critical here, the pate a glacer has to be heated to and held a fairly precise temperature for perfect pouring. In the recipe it only says “body temperature” so there’s a little inbuilt biology test here too! My first one looks absolutely perfect. I am ecstatic. I’m going to rock this challenge! So away I work, unfortunately I stop paying careful attention to my glace temperature and soon it is too thick to pour. Then I heat it up and it is too runny. So little by little my inherent scruffiness starts sneaking back in and although they look not bad I have moved from ecstatic to meh. Then as I look around at the others I start to realize mine are not the best. Man can’t these people screw up more often?!!!
Judging:
Oh 6th? Well that was disappointing. I was sure I’d done better than that. Oh well, onwards and upwards.
Overall:
Nope. Never making those again. Waaay too much work for what in the end is just a little cake cube with too much sweet icing on.
