Lime Cake – with Fondant!

Thanks to Claudia ( www.healmyhands.com / www.8armscreative.com ) for the link to Joe Pastry‘s instructions for making boiled fondant! Notice the block of what looks like chalk, to the right? Well, it turns out that what I’d thought was a colossal (if tasty) failure … is merely the basis for fondant! It needs to be dissolved in a very-slightly-warmed simple syrup, and then it becomes fondant!

So, when I couldn’t think any more, yesterday* … I made the wonderful lemon cake, but this time with a dozen key-limes instead of lemons! Our wonderful grocer** had a dozen limes for £1, so we couldn’t pass them up, and I’ve been wanting to try this cake out with limes anyway. So. Cake made – without the benefit of our immersion blender*** – and then buttercream icing made, and then fondant dissolved / melted.

Cake & cupcakes came out of the oven to cool, while T. was wrestling with getting the fondant to dissolve. They cooled faster because I poked holes in them and poured in lime juice & sugar, to make the cake extra moist. Then, when cool, a thin layer of buttercream to fill the holes, and then a thin layer of fondant. You can see that I’m not exactly the deftest with the application of fondant.

Some of that’s because this is my first attempt, really, and I hadn’t counted on the fondant stiffening as quickly as it did, nor on the buttercream melting to where the fondant wanted to escape. That said, though, the cake went to work and was gone for “elevenses” in about 4 minutes. People were just finishing their first slices, looking around for a second, and there was nothing left.

*One can only think so much in one day, and I was winding down in my work day and discovered that I needed to program my script to do a bunch of currency conversions on an unknown number of source currency values into an unknown number of destination currencies … well, I gave up for the day.
**We really ought to stop calling him the “bin end” guy, but … well, we’re mocking the locals, more than the grocer, because this grocer has actual ripe produce!
***I burned out immersion blender #2, here, on the last lemon cake. The company is replacing it, because, really, appliances shouldn’t overheat to the point where they smoke!

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