Fun with Fondant and the Girl Gourmet Cake Bakery – Review

Some of my favorite competitive shows to watch are the Food Network’s cooking challenges. I’ve seen several challenges that involve the elaborate design and decoration of multi-tiered, multi-shaped cakes that come out looking simply awesome. Similarly, I am completely amazed by women, like Jabbering Jessi, who are able to decorate cakes like the pros. I didn’t learn any cake decorating skills when I was a girl, and haven’t learned many as an adult either! (Although, I can now draw a straight line of icing…sometimes.) Maybe if I had something like the Girl Gourmet Cake Bakery, I would be able to make cakes that look too good to eat as well!

In partnership with Duff Goldman of Ace of Cakes, Jakks has created an special cake bakery kit, the Girl Gourmet Cake Bakery, which includes just about everything you need to create a cake. The only things you need to provide are the pan spray and microwave (to bake the cake) and batteries. The hardest part of the entire cake decorating process was getting everything out of the package. Everything is wrapped very securely and so thoughtfully that it’s like trying to break into Ft. Knox, which is great to ensure that nothing gets damaged during shipping. After un-packaging all of the tools, mixes, and Cake Bakery Base, it was time for the baking to begin!

The Girl Gourmet Cake Bakery comes with very thorough step by step instructions that walk you through the cake baking & decorating process. To bake the cake, you mix up one of the two included cake mixes (mine were chocolate or yellow cake) in the provided bowl using the kit’s measuring spoon and spatula. You pour the batter into the cake molds and use the microwave baker to bake up two tiers of a miniature cake. After the cakes are cooled, they are ready to be decorated.

The most fun part of the entire process is the decorating. The Girl Gourmet Cake Bakery kit comes with four different color fondants, four fondant cutters, gel icing, and rainbow sprinkles. We decorated the yellow cake with blue fondant and white icing. The chocolate cake was decorated with chocolate and red fondants, and pink and white icing. After mixing up the fondant, roll it out using the rolling pin and working mat provided.

Hint: Make sure you don’t roll your fondant too thin. I did and it started tearing a little bit after placing it on the cake. That’s why you see the little bumps and patches in the final pictures of the blue one because those are where I was trying to fill in the holes. My helper did a much better job on the chocolate and red fondants. Hers came out very smooth without any tears.

After you get the fondant onto the cake tiers, you use the special icing pen to apply the icing. To do this, you fill up a tube with one of the provided icings, close it up, then insert it into the air-pressure “pen”, which will slowly spit out the icing as you turn the cake on the turn-table.

Since this was the first time trying to somewhat professionally decorate a cake, I kept mine (the blue one) fairly simply, with just the fondant and the icing. My helper was much more innovative, using different colors and the fondant cutters to add shapes to her cake. Here are pictures of the final cakes:

One of the things I was wondering was “How good does a cake that’s been microwaved actually taste?” Well, the cakes from the Girl Gourmet Cake Bakery tasted GOOD! I wasn’t the hugest fan of the fondant (although I hear that’s typical of fondant) but the actual cake was amazing! I only got to try the yellow cake because the kids ate the chocolate cake too fast for me to try. Here’s a shot of the blue cake so you can see that the cake comes out nice, moist, and light.

Even as an adult, I had a lot of fun baking and decorating cakes with the Girl Gourmet Cake Bakery. This is a great gift for girls ages 8+ (my helper was 13 and she had a blast as well.) Both the Girl Gourmet Cake Bakery and the refill packs and accessories are available in stores nationwide and online. For more information, visit their website – www.mygirlgourmet.com.

Disclaimer: This post consists of my (and/or fellow tester) opinions only. No compensation was given for this review/giveaway. I did receive a free Girl Gourmet Cake Bakery and Refill kit from the manufacturer or the representing PR agency to use and test for the purposes of this review. This did not affect the outcome of this review.