How To: Mini Flower Pot Cakes

My most recent dessert art masterpiece was inspired by one of my favorite youtubers - -Yolanda Gamp at "How to Cake It."  She is brilliant when it comes to cake decorating, especially with fondant.  Her explanations of how she creates designer cakes will give you the confidence to go straight to your kitchen and do the exact same thing yourself. Although it takes a bit more patience than most cake decorating methods, I wanted to try my own hand at using fondant and making a cake that looked like something other than cake.  I decided to try my hand at making mini flower pot cakes! 

Before I started, I wrote out my idea of what I wanted my finished product to look like, as well as made list of materials needed.   Now, I did not use Yolanda’s cake or buttercream recipe, because I wanted to see if I could make a fancy cake with the everyday cake supplies – boxed cake mix and store bought icing - showing that anyone can make this crafty dessert.

Without further ado, this is how I made mini flower pot cakes:

I baked my store-bought cake mix into cupcakes ad left them cool before I started building my flower pot cakes.

Next, I leveled the cakes and staked them with chocolate frosting in between them. 

Then, I frosted the outside of the cakes and put them in the fridge to set for about 20 minutes.

While the cakes were in the fridge, I started to knead my fondant.  I used Wilton’s White Fondant with some brown food coloring kneaded until I got the color I wanted for “ceramic flower pot” color.

Next, I took my cakes out of the fridge and measured their height and circumference to use to cut out my fondant. 

I rolled out my fondant to about a 1/4^th of an inch thick and cut a long rectangle that measured with a width that was a half inch wider than the height of the cakes, and a length the same as the circumference of the cakes.  I then wrapped the fondant around the cake and cut the edge to create a clean seam.

Then I cut a thinner rectangle for the lip of the flower pot the same length, but only about an inch in width.  I attached this piece to be level with the first and cut a clean seam.  Now I have a flower pot that needs to be “planted”!

Next, I made a hole in the cake with the back end of a beater from my hand mixer, you could use a straw for this step too! This hole is to place the “flower” in the flower pot.  I decided to plant up some mint cuttings from my AeroGarden, they are pretty, smell great, and edible!

Now, I needed to make some “Oreo dirt”.  I took the cream out of twelve Oreo cookies and crunched up the cookies in a plastic baggie. 

Once the cookies were in tiny pieces, I planted up my flower pots!  I put the mint cuttings into the hole and filled in the top of the cake with the Oreo dirt.  These are perfect to brighten up a rainy weekend or any garden related party!

Have you ever made an “object” out of cake?  What would you like for me to try next?  Have you ever used fondant?