An Adventure with Fondant

My nephew just had his eleventh birthday party and this year's theme was camouflage.  It was such a great idea!  Every child (and adult!) came wearing camo and each boy got an army dog tag when they got there.  They played "pin the tank on the field" and had a tank pinata.  My brother, the birthday boy's dad, made the birthday cake himself and he decided to go off of the whole army theme and he chose to make a tank for the cake.  He has only decorated four birthday cakes within the last 2 years, but each one has looked amazing!  He is such a great dad and puts his all into these cakes.  He's made a Princess castle cake and a Tinkerbell cake for his girls as well as a dinosaur cake last year for my nephew's birthday.  This year was the first time using Fondant.  He also made the fondant first so it took some time and some learning.  I was just there to oversee the decorating and help if needed, but I definitely learned a lot.  For a professional, the cake should have only taken 45 minutes, but it definitely took a few hours.  Overall, I am so excited to work with fondant myself in the future.  I have looked for fondant recipes and found one here.  I haven't tried it yet, but promise I will let you know how it goes!!  I think the hardest and most time consuming part of using fondant is the rolling out portion.  If I had an automatic roller like the cake boss it would just be perfect!  Anyways, my nephew loved the end project and my brother did an amazing job so it was all worth it!

My brother's army guy addition made it really pop!