How to Make Fondant

• Fondant
  
  Fondant has no unusual ingredients, although it looks like Play-doh and not food. All you need are 2 cups sugar, 1/2 cup water and 2 tbsp. corn syrup. Mix the three together and cook on the stove until it reaches about 238 degrees. At that point, remove it from the heat and stir by hand for about 30 to 40 minutes until it thickens. It will look like frosting but will be much smoother and heavier.
  After it has cooled, you can roll it out onto a rolling mat dusted with powdered sugar, knead it until smooth, and roll it thin enough to work with but not so thin that it falls apart. If you have no strength left to roll it by hand, you can put it through a pasta press until it is the thickness you want.
  In case you want to have a little more fun and a little less stress, you can buy fondant premade at buyfondant.com or a local bakery or cake decorating shop.
  
  

Spruce It Up and Build Your Cake

• You can add color and flavoring to the fondant since you most likely do not want to make a pure white birthday cake. Also, think about what decorations you will want to put on the cake. Get cookie cutters in shapes that you would need, or even buy cake tools that allow you to precisely cut fondant into other shapes that can only be made by hand.
  
  Once your cake is cooled, spread a light layer of buttercream around the top and sides to help the fondant stick. Gently lay the fondant over the cake and spread it softly from the inside out, and around the sides. This will allow you to get rid of any air bubbles in the fondant and between the fondant and the cake. If you have multiple layers, do this to each layer and put a dab of butter cream to ensure the layers stick on top of each other without falling off.
  
  

Children's Birthday Cake

• Mickey Mouse Cake
  
  If your son or daughter likes Disney movies, you can create a Disney-themed cake. By using your decorating tools, you can create flat characters that you can place on your cake. If you are a really good artist and steady with your hands, you can build them out of the fondant to make them more realistic and three-dimensional. Use different food coloring dyes to add effect to each character. To really thrill the birthday child, incorporate his name onto the cake somehow.
  
  

Adult Birthday Cake

• Shoebox Birthday Cake
  
  Make a birthday-present-shaped cake in the shape of a shoe box for a girl's birthday, or a guitar case for a guy. You can easily cut and shape the cake to reflect any of these shapes, and then you just cover it in fondant and get to work. Decorate the shoe box cake with designer shoe names on the boxes, or label the guitar cake with the boy's name and the guitar brand in fine writing. To finish off the birthday-present cake, cut strips of colored fondant and lay them across the top of the cake in each direction creating a bow.