Cowboy Hat Cake Tutorial – Part 2

If you missed it, be sure to check out How to Make a Cowboy Hat Cake, Part 1. In that post, I shared about how to prep the cake and get it ready for the decorating. Here in part 2, I’m going to share how to do all the fondant work and finish it up!

So let’s get started!  Here’s what you’ll need*:

• 6″ Half Ball Cake baked in a Wilton Sports Ball pan or another 6″ hemisphere pan
• Buttercream
• Off-set Spatula & Knife
• Brown Fondant (2 shades)
• Rolling Pins (2 small ones)
• Apple Corer
• Fondant Smoother
• Pastry Wheel or Pizza Cutter
• Tylose
• Ribbon Cutter (or knife & ruler)
• 8″ and 10″ cardboard cake rounds
• Shortening

*Please note that these are the things you’ll need for both part 1 and part 2 of this tutorial!!

When we left off your cake was chilling. Now that it’s cold and firm, we’re ready to decorate.   Here we go…

Step 1: Roll out your brown fondant to a circle approximately 10- 12″ round.

Step 2: Lift up the fondant and gently lay it over the chilled cake. Use your hands to smooth it down around the cake. Because the cake is chilled and firm, you’ll be able to apply quite a bit of pressure to get it smooth without damaging the cake.

Step 3: After I get it as smooth as I can with my hands, I use a fondant smoother to really get the edges sharp around the bottom!

Step 4: After you get it really smooth and formed to the shape of the cake, you’ll take a pastry wheel and trim off all of the excess. The trimming doesn’t have to be perfect because you’ll be adding a band around the bottom.

Step 5: For the band around the hat, you’ll want to use a different color fondant – I chose a darker shade of brown.  Roll it out into a long strip – at least 20 inches long, then use a ribbon cutter (or a ruler and pizza wheel) to cut your strip of fondant. I made mine approximately 1″ wide, but you could do it wider or narrower.

Step 6: Wrap the ribbon around the base of the hat cake and trim it at the back. If it doesn’t feel secure, you can use a little shortening or sugar glue to attach it.

Step 7: Now it’s time to make the brim of the hat. Take a small ball of fondant and mix in 1-2 teaspooons of Tylose. The tylose will help the fondant to dry/harden so that the brim will hold it’s shape.

Step 8: Roll out the fondant to at least a 10″ circle. I like to leave it a little thicker than usual – maybe 2-3mm thick.

Step 9: Lay a 10″ cardboard cake round on top and cut out a circle. You could also trace around a bowl or other object that will give you a perfect circle.

Step 10: At this point, I transferred my circle to a smaller cutting board (with a little corn starch dusted on it to prevent sticking). I did this so I could move it to a more convenient location to dry (instead of on the mat in the middle of my workspace). So, I laid it on the cutting board, then used 2 small 9″ rolling pins to gently roll up the edges for the brim of the hat. I applied a little shortening to the rolling pins so the fondant would stick.

Step 11: Lay the cake in the center to make sure it will fit and you can get the rolling pins out without damaging the cake.

Step 11: Allow this to dry for several hours or overnight and you’re DONE! At least with the cake part. While it dried, I covered a cake board in fondant and added wood texture (see how to do that in this post) and then I transferred the cake from my cutting board to the final cake board the next morning:

I also added the number “2”, Aiden’s name and the sheriff’s star to finish up the cake!   Perfect, huh?

Happy Caking!

Rose