French Fancies - Revisited

The pink ones are plain, the yellow (which I should have added more colour too) are lemon flavoured and the chocolate ones are, well, chocolate of course!

These 6 are thinly covered in marzipan for a smoother finish.

These 6 have no marzipan underneath, the fondant was poured right over the icing blob and cake. (edit - these were actually the best!)

I know I have blogged these before but I wanted to try them again doing more or less everything from scratch. Last time I used a cake mix and ready rolled fondant, they tasted great but the fondant wasn't right, too soft as I didn't use a 'pourable' fondant. I wanted to completely make my own but the recipe I wanted to use requires a candy thermometer which I am having trouble finding. So for these I made my own cake, kept the buttercream and jam the same but bought a box of fondant icing sugar that you add water to until 'pourable' with whatever flavours and colours you like.

They turned out very good, the cake for some reason came out quite dark, it looks like I used wholemeal flour but I assured you I didn't - still tastes good. For some of the fancies I covered in very thinly rolled out marzipan, then poured the fondant over just to get a smoother finish (plus the marzipan tasted great in these, sort of french fancies meet battenburg!) For the rest I just poured the fondant straight over the icing blob and cake, these ones got a crisper fondant which is more accurate but don't look as pretty.

Makes about 20 fancies depending on how you cut them.

**Edit - I have now, finally, made a white sponge cake I am more than happy with. Recipe is in my White Chocolate Raspberry Mousse Cake post. I haven't used it yet to make these but I have no doubt it would turn out best as it actually comes out looking white! That being said, I'll leave this cake recipe up as well.**

Sponge Cake:
250ml rice or soy milk
1 tsp apple cyder vinegar
30g vegan margarine
140g caster sugar
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
200g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 180C and line an 11 x 7.5 x 1" jelly roll pan with baking paper - set aside. Combine the cyder vinegar and rice milk and set aside to get a little curdly. Beat together the margarine and sugar then add the oil and vanilla and beat well. In another bowl add all the dry ingredients and set aside. Alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk into the margarine mixture, stirring well after each addition but be careful not to overmix. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for about 18 - 20 minutes or until golden all over and feels firm to touch. Let cool fully in pan then carefully turn out and remove the paper.

Cut the cake slab in half, spread raspberry jam over one side then place the other half on top. Cut this into squares, however many or size you want.

Vanilla Buttercream:
2 Tbsp vegetable fat (shortening)
2 Tbsp vegan margarine
3/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp icing sugar
1/4 plus 1/8 tsp vanilla extract

Prepare the buttercream by simply whisking all the ingredients together until smooth, it will be slightly stiffer than the recipe for cupcakes as you want it to hold it's shape when the fondant goes on. Place frosting into a piping bag with a large straight circle tip and pipe little blobs on top of each cake. My previous post on these has step by step photos here .

Now, if you are going to add marzipan, I just very thinly rolled out some marzipan and placed over the whole cake, adding some more jam to the outside edges to help it stick. Also make sure you dust your surface and rolling pin with some icing sugar as it can be sticky. If you are not going to add it, some almond extract added to the pink fondant is very nice.

Fondant:
375g fondant icing sugar
6 Tbsp hot water
1/2 Tbsp cocoa powder
lemon juice
red food colour - check vegan
yellow food colour - check vegan
1/16 vanilla extract


For the fondant I mixed 125g fondant icing sugar with about 2 Tbsp hot water for each colour. The pink ones had some red food colouring added, the yellow ones had yellow colour and fresh lemon juice and the chocolate had 1/2 Tbsp cocoa powder and 1/16 vanilla extract added. Add more hot water or fondant icing sugar to get a spoonable, fairly thick frosting. Then, it's pretty messy, because of the icing blob on top I couldn't really dip these so I placed them on some baking paper and spooned over the fondant, making sure all the sides got covered. With some as I had the fondant too thin I had to cover 2 -3 times. When they are uniformly covered carefully lift off the paper with a butter knife and place on a plate and refrigerate until fully set.

The squiggles on top are more buttercream thinned out for the pink ones and just melted dark chocolate for the yellow and chocolate ones.

I definitely prefer this fondant to the last one, but strangely enough prefer the cake mix of last time to this one. I think all the chemicals in it make it more like the Mr. Kipling ones...oh the shame.... Anyway, they are very good and so cute - great for presenting if you have guests over.