The Cake Shop, Covered Market, Oxford

Draping the fondant
Beautiful tiny cakes
A whole array of treats

Fondant is a cream confection used as a filling or coating for cakes, pastries, and candies or sweets. In its simplest form, it is sugar and water cooked to the soft-ball stage, cooled slightly, and stirred or beaten until it is an opaque mass of creamy consistency. Wikipedia

I had never heard the word before today. Anne and I shopped the Oxford Covered Market and The Cake Shop is a tiny and very busy bakery within. There were at least five people working non-stop today maybe getting ready for the weekend. All stages of making and decorating cakes were represented simultaneously in the shop, from batter to box almost. The ease and speed with which they create figures and flowers and piping and layering and color coordinating the whole theme of the cake is a testament of course to their skill. Somebody could try to teach me, but it would be hopeless. I would never be that good. The man in the photo above worked so quickly and as if he was actually thinking about other things while he rolled out and applied the fondant to the cake. Truly impressive but herein lies the story.

Anne watches the Cake Network and was excited to see them using fondant. She continued to explain in great detail how the baker makes the fondant, and then rolls out the fondant and then lays the fondant on the cake and then uses a tool to smooth out the fondant to make sure there are no air bubbles underneath the fondant. You know how a word can begin to sound unreal and then hearing it becomes completely irritating once that happens? She was doing it on purpose to annoy me as I often think of most people and the things they do.

"Wow, that's awesome, now stop saying fondant, already. It's irritating. "

"You're just mad that I know something you don't know."



So, I took her to see the butcher.