I made little dice cakes for a Bunko game I played over a friend’s house on Saturday. 

I made these more painful than they had to be.  In the end, they came out pretty well.   I used a yellow cake box mix cooked in a 13×9 pan.  I trimmed it up the best I could.  Then I used the medium square cookie cutter from the Wilton set to cut each die out.  I used poured fondant to make it smooth and shiny.  They key with smooth fondant is that all sides need to be iced with buttercream or jam before using the fondant.  At first these were a crumbly mess to do.  I was getting more icing on my hands than on the cakes. 

To remedy the crumbly mess problem (yes, Randy, you were right), I popped the cakes in the freezer for a bit.  Then microwaved the buttercream so it was really runny.  The runny icing went on fairly easily to the cold cakes.  One thing that helped with the messiness was that all the tops of the cakes had been previously iced so there was a crusty top to lightly touch while icing the sides.

I found the poured fondant recipe on this website:  http://www.wrenscottage.com/kitchen/recipes/icing/poured_fondant.php

Instead of almond flavor I used orange extract (slightly more than 1 tsp).  It gave it a very light vibrant flavor.  Poured fondant isn’t nearly as sweet as buttercream or rolled fondant so Randy prefers it.

Pouring the fondant was an adventure.  All the cakes were on a cooling rack over a cookie sheet to catch the excess.  It worked much better to take a large spoonful and cover each side of the cake in one shot.  The dribbling method didn’t work that well.  And little spoonfuls would cool before the additional spoonfuls could be added and ended up looking like melted wax.

So, overall it was a good learning experience.  Everyone at the party thought I was trying to show them up.  I’m going to give the poured fondant another try here in a few weeks for a baby shower.  These will be mini cupcakes in wrappers, so a different challenge.