Stories to Devour - January 2013

My mom and I made this cake with pages from classic books on it for my sister, Casandra, for her birthday.  My mom baked and iced the cake, and then I decorated it with the fondant pages I had made.  I chose excerpts from books that I knew my sister liked and ones that I thought she probably had read and liked.

[If you'd like to quiz yourself on what books the excerpts are from
then take a look at the last two pictures in this post.  :) ]

So, for decorating this cake I started by choosing the books that I was going to use and then finding the excerpt that I wanted from the book.  When choosing your excerpts keep in mind the amount of room that you will have to write.  I ended up having to shorten or choose a different section of a few excerpts because of space.

I rolled out some white fondant fairly thin.  From the computer I had printed a rectangle the size I wanted the pages to be.  I cut the rectangle out, put it on the fondant, and cut around the shape to make my rectangle of fondant.  I repeated this for as many pages as I needed.

After cutting the rectangles out of the fondant, I let them set for a bit.  This lets the surface be a little harder and smoother which makes them easier to write on.  If you try to write on them right away, I find that the marker wants to sink and drag in the fondant.  If you are planning on curling the corners of any of your pages, then don't let them dry too much or they will crack when you go to curl them (I curled mine after I wrote on them because they were easier to write on when they were flat).

I used a black food coloring marker to write on the fondant pages.  I had a Wilton fine tip marker, so that is what I used on these.  Before I wrote on my fondant I tested out writing one of the excerpts on my paper rectangle that I had printed out with an ink pen (take into consideration that your marker will write thicker).  This just gave me an idea of size and spacing.  Once I had my first one written on the fondant (that happened to take up a full page) I could use that to judge the others that I had to write.

After I wrote on the fondant pages and curled the corners of some of them I set them aside to finish drying.  Some of them that I had curled I had to put something under the curled part while it dried to keep it from falling back down.  Then on the day of the party I just placed them on the cake that my mom had ready.

Everyone kind of did a double take realizing that they were handwritten.  :)  Casandra really liked the cake and from what I remember she knew all of the books the excerpts were from except for one.  She hadn't read it yet but wanted to.  :)  I was very happy with the way it turned out.

Okay, here's the quiz.  :)

Look at the pictures and see how many book titles you know from the excerpts below (bonus if you know the authors).  :) Have fun!  :)

 

[To see any picture larger you can just click on it.  :) ]

 

Look in the comments below for the answers.

(I created my animated name at this site.)