I think if I could produce things as I see them in my mind, I’d be awesome. My Draw Something pictures would be hilarious and astonishing. So when a friend asked me to do her daughter’s 1st birthday cake, several ideas immediately popped into my head and I took on the task with great optimism. She wanted baby blocks with her daughter’s name on them which I discovered, after a quick poll with Friends Who Bake, would cost a small fortune if made entirely out of fondant. I thought of covering cake blocks with fondant, but knowing my cake-covering skills (i.e. none), I looked at alternatives. After a bit of Googling and thinking about stuff I’d seen on TV, I got the idea to cover Rice Krispie treats with fondant. That Duff guy off Ace of Cakes does it all the time and it looks super easy!
[Friends and family, I beg of you: in future, please whack me with a cast iron frying pan when I say things like "that looks super easy!" Because it won't be and it'll save me hours of pain and swearing. Thanking you in advance.]
First I had to make the treats, which is something I’d never done before. How someone can spend 30 years of their life in Canada and not make these, I’ll never know. I looked up a recipe and cut out the blocks, ensuring they were big enough to fit my Tappits letters. Tappits are a great idea, but absolutely rubbish in practice. It’s a series of letters and numbers laid out in a row like a ruler that you use with fondant. You roll the fondant out very thinly, press the letter cutter on it, and hey presto, you’ve cut out a letter. Except that the icing sticks to the inside of the intricate cutter and if you try to tap, poke, or pull the letter out, you end up with a Salvador Dali-esque blob with decorative swirls. Eventually, I managed to get enough letters out that didn’t look like they’d melted in the sun.
I got the very clever idea (get that frying pan ready) to cut out the fondant to cover the treats with a square cutter. This would give me nice clean edges and a uniform size. Here is a list of things I learned:
- Don’t move the icing after it’s been cut. Roll out the icing on to greaseproof paper and cut directly on the paper. Otherwise, the squares will be SO NOT SQUARE after you move them.
- Let the icing dry for at least two days before attempting to stick them to the blocks. If you don’t do this, you will get bumpy blocks. Stucco blocks. Not nice blocks.
- Cut the treats slightly smaller than the size of your icing squares. Most sensible people would do this. Took me three tries to figure out why my square sides didn’t line up properly. If I was a bird, I’d be slamming into your patio doors repeatedly right about now.
- Use royal icing to stick everything together because it hardens well and helps level everything out. Buttercream sucks. Don’t use it. The sides will go all slidey.
- Don’t pick the damn things up after you’ve painstakingly assembled them. Your fat fingers will leave imprints and make cracks. Leave them for at least two days, until completely dry.
Here are the blocks. They are awesome blocks. Fuck yeah, BLOCKS.
And then I made the cake. And I put the blocks next to the cake:

Arse.









