DIY Geode Cake

Pinstrosipeeps! 

I literally have THE coolest friends. They are so good about sending me pictures that remind them of me, and most of the time they are funny and cute,but every once in a while they speak to my soul. Marquette sent me a Instagram a few weeks back that was like my soul in a cake. And I just HAD to have it. 

Fast forward to one of my other BFF's coming to visit, and we decide that we are going to tackle said project even though it may be way over our head. We fear no fail. 

This is what we decided we wanted to recreate:

Photo and Cake Credit: Charla Chouinard Instgram handle: charkala_

 

Fun fact of the day...I didn't even realize until right this very instant that this was a girl I went to high school with?! What?! Small world! This isn't the first first picture we saw of Geode cakes, but it pulled up when I did a search and was similar colors and super pretty, this was just an idea Marquette had seen and showed me on google when she came to visit. When I did the search of images for this blog post a few days ago, this is one of the first ones that popped up and just happens to be made by someone I know!

 

 

Isn't that fantastic?! So beautiful!  So I went to work, I called around town looking for gold leafing, I went to Michael's and Hobby Lobby looking for edible gold leafing and  priced some of their baking tools, and I even called some places in Salt Lake.

Manny my New Mexico BFF came and we got to work! We went to all our stores to pick everything up, we even went to three different stores to get all the rock candy we needed for this!

As for the gold leafing...I called 5 stores and went to 3 different stores and only found ONE place that had edible gold leafing. Here's the kicker...it was $75.00 for 3 ounces!! WHAT?! So...we went with a gold luster dust and gold faux leafing alternative that we found at Hobby Lobby for about $3 a piece instead. Apparently gold leafing is really only for super fancy occasions...because at my house Thursdays just aren't good enough for $75 cake décor.

 

Here's our stash:

 

 

 

We bought rock candy in light blue, dark blue, white and purple. They were SO yummy, of course we sneaked some during the process!

 

We also had blue and white fondant, generic frosting and rainbow chip cake, and then some of the supplies for the cake itself.

 

The fondant was probably the hardest part, we followed the directions and rolled it out, kneaded it and then we roped the two colors together to create a marbled affect when it is all rolled out.

We baked the cakes beforehand and crumb coated them and then put them in the freezer so they would be easier to work with and not crumble-y. When we had the fondant where we wanted it, we pulled the cakes out of the freezer and threw it on there! Getting a smooth coat on the cake was really difficult. Did I mention this is both of our first foray's into fondant?! Because it was.

 

We used powdered sugar to keep the fondant manageable, you can also use corn starch.

 

Then came the really fun part, decorating!

 

We pulled all the rock candy off the sticks and put them in ziplock baggies and then used the rolling pin to crush them to a more manageable size. The air smelled sweet during the beating part lol

 

We cut out our desired geode cave shape with a small knife, and then covered it in frosting before placing our rock candy.

Lastly we put our "gold leafing" on the cake and threw some luster dust on there for good measure.

 

 

 

 

Here is our final result!

 

Not too shabby for our first fondant cake EVER. It's not perfect by any means, and the more I look at it, the more I tend to find faults, but it's a cake not a Saint, so who cares if it isn't perfect?! It was REALLY sweet, but it was good and it was just really fun getting to do this project with a friend!

Are any of you mavericks with fondant?! What are your secrets?! Share below!

 

Happy Monday all!