My First "Cricut Cake" Cake & Circle Blog Contest Entry

Well today was really a test in patience.  Not to mention lots of trial and error.  I started the day at 8:30A after having made the cake, buttercream frosting, marshmallow fondant and gum paste the night before.  I was finally done decorating the cake at 2:30P.

First off, some pictures from last night.  Mixing the marshmallow fondant, it was very sticky but a lot of fun to mix!

Here it's finally getting to the right consistency.

Our cake frosted first with a 1/4" layer of buttercream frosting that we made the night before.

The fondant colored a light blue and rolled out to about 1/8" thick.

I used a pizza cutter to cut off the excess fondant.

Everything went perfectly up to this point.  So, we moved on to the gumpaste.  I used the Linda McClure recipe and had watched all of the videos.  I'm not sure what went wrong, but it was not good.  The color wouldn't incorporate into the paste and it was very brittle.  Not to mention that the gum tex made it smell and taste like vinegar - yuck!  I know that Linda recommends a kitchenaid mixer, but I don't have one, so maybe that added to my string of bad luck.

So, into the garbage this went!

I decided at this point, to just try using the fondant in the Cricut Cake.  Hmm, the blade did not like the fondant - too soft.  Put the fondant on the mat and into the freezer for a half hour, this worked better but still not ideal.  I definitely need to find a better recipe for gum paste IF I ever try this again.

After several hours, here's what I finally ended up with.  I'm also entering this into the Cricut Circle MB February Monthly Challenge.

In the end, I was pretty happy with how my first attempt turned out.  Not sure when I'll try this again, since it took the majority of my weekend.  If anyone has a gum paste recipe that works in the cricut cake machine and doesn't taste horrible, please let me know.