Fondant Fancies

My 12yo was home from school recovering from a cold and nagged mercilessly to be able to make Fondant Fancies.  I decided to give her free reign in the kitchen to create these rather fiddly and messy delights.  The fondant icing is tricky, getting the right consistency is a real faff.  Other than that it is mainly an assembly line job with patience needed for the various fridge chilling stages.

She used a "bung it all in" method to make the sponge.  I will now hand over blogging the rest of the recipe over to her:

Fondant Fancies

For the sponge:

225g self-raising flour

225g baking spread or softened butter

225g caster sugar

4 large free-range eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 160C/Gas Mark 3.  Grease and line a 20cm square tin with non-stick baking paper or a paper liner.

Measure all the sponge ingredients into a bowl and beat until smooth. I used a standmixer.  Pour the cake mixture into the tin and level the top.

Bake for about 40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.  Leave the cake to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.  Once completely cool cut into 25 evenly sized squares.  Put the sponge squares in the fridge for half an hour to firm up while you make the buttercream.  This makes the sponge less fragile when you are spreading the buttercream onto it. 

For the buttercream:

250g/9oz unsalted butter, softened

200g/7oz icing sugar

Beat together the softened butter and icing sugar in a bowl until pale and smooth.  Put some of the buttercream in a piping bag and put in the fridge to chill, you'll need this to make the blobs on the top.

Use the rest of the buttercream to spread on the sides and top of each sponge square.  Pipe a blob on to the top of each buttercreamed sponge square.  Put the buttercream coated sponge pieces into the fridge to chill for at least half an hour.  This will make sure the buttercream is firm and stop it from melting when you are dipping the fancies.

For the fondant:

500g solid sugarpaste/fondant icing

75ml/5 Tblsp water

Cut the fondant icing into small pieces.  Put in a standmixer and use a paddle attachment.  Turn on, usng a low speed, mix until the sugarpaste starts to be broken down then gradually add the water one tablespoon at a time while constantly mixing.  The icing will become smooth and form a thick liquid.  Add flavoured extracts and/or gel colours at this point.  

Take the cakes out of the fridge and tidy up the buttercream if you need to with a warm knife.  Put a sponge square onto a fork, make sure the fork is at a slight angle. Dip each square into the icing the carefully put it onto a cooling rack with a tray underneath to catch any drips of fondant.  Keep dipping the sponges one at a time until they are all coated in fondant.  Leave to set on the tray.  Don't put them in the fridge to set or the fondant won't dry with a nice glossy finish.  .

You can melt some chocolate in the microwave on medium power in 30 second bursts, stirring after each burst, then pipe it over the fancies to make a stripy pattern.  We used some sugarpaste decorations we had made to decorate some of them too.

The verdict:

Making the fondant fancies took about 3 hours in total.  It was a long process with lots of waiting about for the sponges to chill in the fridge.  I would bake them again but not for a while, I prefer quicker bakes with a lot less stages.  They were delicious  but not really worth the faff it took to make them, especially getting the consistency of the fondant right which was really frustrating.


As 12yo is quite rightly proud of her efforts, and I am a very proud Mum, I'm linking this recipe to #cookitblogit co-hosted by Cass from Frugal Family and Emma from Crazy With Twins.

I'm also linking this recipe to the Recipe of the Week linky from A Mummy Too.