Making a gold crown with fondant
My kid turned 1 last December and I wanted to give him a first birthday to remember, with balloons and cake and a dumb cake smash, societal pressures be damned. Which is ridiculous, because he’s ONE and won’t remember anything, so yes I completely acknowledge this was about what I wanted ;) He’s only 1 once you know! Sadly I didn’t plan for our entire family to catch a cold, so his actual birthday was quietly spent without much fanfare. Which was still nice. Dad did go pick up a tasty bakery cake, but I wanted to make a SPECIAL cake for his 1st birthday. So after everyone was well again, I felt ambitious and wanted to give fondant a try.
I was inspired by this simple frosted white cake with a gold crown on top. There’s something so cute but elegant about it. Not to mention I totally have a thing for crowns.
Since I’m no baking pro and wasn’t about to make fondant from scratch, I just bought a ready-made tub from Amazon. I thought it worked well and smelled and tasted alright. The trouble came after I mixed in some yellow food coloring gel which added some moisture, making it tackier and somewhat harder to work with.
I imagine if you’re experienced with modeling clay or Sculpey, fondant is likely not a problem. But I haven’t worked with anything clay-like since I was a kid so I ended up making a hot mess. These crowns look simple but this shit took me FOUR TRIES. I don’t have any special tools so I just used a regular rolling pin, plastic cutting mat, and paring knife to cut. I made a bunch of amateur mistakes, like I didn’t clean my work surfaces or rolling pin so I got dust particles everywhere. I used a glass bottle to keep the round shape while drying it, but didn’t line it with parchment/wax paper so it stuck to the bottle and I couldn’t get it off. It broke. After MUCH trial and error, I got a passable crown shape. I made a second backup one with the leftover fondant pieces just in case of more failure.
TA-DA
After waiting a day for them to dry, it was time to get to the fun part: PAINTING.
I did some research on how to get fondant to be a really shiny gold and not just a flat bronze. I had wanted shiny gold on our wedding cake a few years ago, and they did not deliver… so I knew what I did NOT want. Then I found this 24k gold dust. This stuff looks AMAZING, it’s so bright. Plus it’s not super expensive. If only they had used this on the wedding cake... If only I had just made my own wedding cake and saved the money! Ah well, that’s all in the past...
I read that you’re supposed to mix the gold dust with vodka and brush it on that way, and the alcohol will evaporate. However we do not have vodka laying around and I wasn’t about to go out to get some, so I ended up using whisky. Was it a good idea? Well, the cheapest whisky I had on hand was Ardbeg 10, so the crowns gave off a noticeably peaty scent over a few days. Oops. Anyway it worked out.
Pretty much done
Between waiting for coats to dry and remembering to re-coat, these took a few days to finish. I think I ended up applying 3-4 coats. If you have an airbrush you could probably get a smooth even coat much more quickly, but mine is somewhere deep in storage so it was too much trouble to take it out. Once it’s coated in the gold, the fondant is relatively well-sealed so it basically lasts forever. (I probably wouldn’t eat it though.) I stored them in a covered cake stand so it could breath while I got the actual cake ready.
Overall a little clumsy, but I’m fairly happy with the results! Next up, the cake and its fate.