Many cake decorators have issues with how to cover a square cake with fondant. This is because unlike round cakes, a square cake has angles. These angles can be very frustrating to straighten out and smoothen.
In this article, we would be sharing some expert tips and advice from veterans that would help you cover your square cakes without issues.
How To Cover A Square Cake With Fondant – Tools and Ingredients Needed
Covering a square cake with fondant needs basically the same ingredients and tools as for every other shape of cake.
These tools and ingredients include the following: –
Cake Leveler or Serrated Knife
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Procedure For Covering A Square Cake With Fondant
Covering a square cake with fondant can be simple as long as you follow some basic rules. The following are the procedures to follow:-
Prepare the Cake For Covering
Level off your cake with the cake leveler or serrated knife. Trim all the edges of the cake to ensure that you have sharp edges.
Next, crumb coat the cake and leave to set; you can refrigerate for about 30 minutes. Lastly, cover the cake with a final coat of icing. Some decorators stop at crumb coating the cake; it’s your choice. If you are covering more than one layer of cake, level each layer and fill with frosting of your choice before starting on the crumb coating.
Roll Out The Fondant
Place your fondant on the rolling mat and roll out enough to cover the cake; make it about 1/8th of an inch. If you are working on a surface without a rolling mat, ensure that you dust the surface with cornstarch.
Lift the rolled out fondant with your rolling pin and cover the square cake. Gently adhere the fondant to the top and sides of the cake; pay extra attention to the sides.
Smooth Out The Fondant
(i) Using your fondant smoothers on both sides of each edge, pinch the fondant together be careful not to tear off the top edge.
(ii) Next using your scissors, cut off the excess fondant on the edges. Be careful with cutting off the excess fondant. Do so a little at a time so that you wouldn’t cut off too much.
(iii) Still using the two fondant smoothers, smooth out the sides of each edge of the cake until the excess fondant falls off.
(iv) Finally, use acetate fondant smoother to polish away any remaining rough edges.
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These steps are just the basic steps to covering a square cake with fondant. There are many other methods that cake decorators have perfected over the years.
Included in this article are two video. The first would show you the basic method we’ve explained with a few variations while the second would show you another method that you can use. Additionally, you can also check out one of our previous articles on how to cover a cake with fondant; click here to read it . You’ll surely pick up one or two useful tips.
How To Cover A Square Cake With Fondant – Expert Tips
Icing and Fondant Rules
(i) Do not roll your fondant thicker than 1/8 of an inch. If the fondant is too heavy, it would impact on the cake and be too difficult to work with. It would weigh on the sides (edges of the cake) and would give you the desired sharp edges.
(ii) We mentioned earlier that some experts insist that only a thin coat of icing is needed on a cake before covering with fondant. This is because too much icing underneath the fondant would make it stretch and be slippery. It can really get cumbersome to work with.
(iii) Other decorators however, do a full crumb coat and double coating before decorating their cakes. We have discovered that thin icing works better for us. You might want to experiment and find out what works best for you.
(iv) If you live in a region with high humidity, you might want to use more of cornstarch to dust your work surface and fondant. Those who on the other hand live in dry regions, would do well with work more with vegetable shortening. This would keep the icing from drying out while also giving it a glossy finish.
(v) It is best to chill your crumb coated and or iced cake before covering with fondant. This would help you achieve sharp edges easier.
Covering and Smoothing
(i) Quickly smooth out the top and sides of your cake so that the weight of the fondant would not rest on the sides of the cake
(ii) You can spritz your chilled cake with some water to help the fondant adhere better to the cake. Dry spots would cause your fondant to have air bubbles. But be careful not to spritz the cake with too much water as this would make the fondant slippery.
(iii) When smoothing out your fondant on a square cake, ensure that you get the four corner nicely smooth before working on the sides. This would help to ensure that the fondant doesn’t tear off from the corners.
How To Cover A Square Cake With Fondant – Conclusion
You do not have to remain scared of covering square cakes with fondant. Practice they say makes perfect but dare point out that practice only makes permanent. It takes practice of the right procedure and methods to make perfect.
You can start out with square cake dummies until you get comfortable enough to move on to real cakes. Bear in mind that your first time with a real cake might not be entirely flawless. However, practice with the cake dummies would have prepared for a little bit for what to expect.
On that note. We leave you with the second video.
PS – The method used in this video works best for square cakes with ganache. We also advise that you read the comments on the video; you’ll surely pick up more tips from them.
Before you finally leave this site,we recommend that you check out some of our articles and product reviews:-
- How To Make Cake Lace – 3 Simple Recipes
- Pepe Nero Decorating Kit- Full Review
- Wilton Intermediate Fondant Set – Full Review
- How Long Does It Take Fondant Decorations To Dry?
- Saragoos Cake Decorating Kit-Full Review
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