Today is my daughter Courtney’s 19th birthday and so she and I decided to attempt a full size fondant cake.  It actually came out pretty good!  I found the recipe for the cake underneath the fondant on a great website called cakecentral.com.  This is the recipe they suggested for using under fondant.  It comes from someone called “kakeladi” and apparently is a popular recipe so here’s the recipe, with all kakeladi’s tips included.

1 box cake mix (she prefers Betty Crocker, any cake flavor can be used) (I used Devil’s Food)

1 cup flour (if using a chocolate cake mix then make this 1/2 cup flour and 1/2 cup cocoa)

1 cup sugar

generous dash of salt

1 cup sour cream or plain or flavored yogurt (I used sour cream)

1 cup water (or milk, juice, thawed frozen concentrates, soda (like Coke), cream or just about anything wet for the liquid) (I used milk)

3 eggs

1 tablespoon flavoring (match flavoring to cake such as lemon/almond mix for lemon cake, strawberry for strawberry, etc, for most flavors you can use a mix of vanilla, butter and almond extracts which is what she does most of the time, she uses this mix – 1 part vanilla, 1/2 part butter, 1/4 part almond) (I used 1 tablespoon vanilla because I wasn’t sure if Courtney would like the almond flavoring but when I make this recipe again then I’ll probably try kakeladi’s mixture of flavors)

1  In bowl, mix together dry ingredients using a wire whisk which is important with a chocolate cake mix but not so much for other flavors.

2  In a mixer bowl, place next 4 ingredients.  Add about 1/2 the dry ingredients and blend together then add rest of dry ingredients and blend.  Mix for 2 minutes.  (She uses a Kitchenaid mixer, position #1 to stir in then #4 to mix the batter.)

3  Pour into prepared pans and bake as usual.  (She prefers to bake at 300 for about 20 – 30 minutes, depending on size of cake, then turns the oven up to 325 for about equal time.  If the cake has pulled away from the sides, it is overbaked.  After cooling, the top might be a bit sticky.)

(She says this makes the amount of batter as if you used 1 1/2 mixes and is perfect for a 10″ square or 9 x 13″ or an 8″ or two 6″ rounds or two 8″ rounds or one 12″ round.)  (I used 2 square pans, one was 8″ and one was 6″ and this was the perfect amount of batter.)

Here’s the birthday girl with her cake!