glazing a bundt cake

No matter what you use, some of the detail will be obscured. I would use a ganache. You can make it thin and put on as many coatings as you think are necessary. I would put the cake on a rack over a sheet pan and pour the ganache over it. You can collect the excess and use it for additional coatings. The other option would be a poured fondant like one would use on pettifours. The fondant will harden and be a more satisfactory base for piping decorations. You can tint the fondant. The ganache will taste better but it will be the color of the chocolate or confectioner's coating that you use. I guess that you could use white chocolate and oil-based chocolate coloring agents.

I would use a light lemon/confectioner's sugar glaze. Prick the cake repeatedly and drizzle it on. It will sink about 1/2 inch into the cake and provide a sweet flavor, but won't obscure any of the details. It's not even really visible. I'd drizzle a couple times, and let the bottom of cake soak up as much of the excess as possible. The downside is that visually your fancy cake is just one brown crust in the shape of a sand castle.

Thank you both for your replies!

I was actually thinking ganache v poured fondant. How about that. I'm smarter than I thought! I would *love* to use a lemon glaze, but alas, the boy wants a CHOCOLATE cake, naturally. The sandcastle is going to sit atop a regular rectangular base. The sandcastle part is for the kids, covered with candy.. and visually impressive. The bottom part is for the grownups. Same cake in both parts.

So, I might just go with the fondant for the top so I can make it gray like a castle... I'll use the pan as a reference and pipe on the details that get obscured.

Then for the bottom I'll use something more delicious for the grownups. :)

Thanks again! S.

Hi- A while back you posted a recipe for 'quick poured fondant'. (I would include a link that here but I'm having trouble figuring out how to do that easily. The article can be easily found by searching for "poured fondant.")

In that posting you suggested pre-glazing the cake with melted apricot jelly. Would you suggest that in this case?

Thanks- S.

I think a very thin coating of jelly would help the fondant stick. I would melt the jelly and use a pasty brush to coat the cake. Of course you can skip that step and if the glaze isn't perfectly uniform, you can compensate with piped decorations and candy decorations.

You might take a look at this site. There are several suggestions for glazes

That's a great site. Thanks.

It talks about putting on the apricot glaze to give the fondant something to stick to.

Now I may be getting a little wacky.. but I'm starting to think about the yummy chocolate taste of ganache. What would happen if I used a *ganache* glaze under the fondant? Could the fondant stick to that? Then the cake would have chocolate in the frosting and I could also color the fondant to look like a stone castle. Other than the extra work involved, do you think this would work?

It might work but if you only are looking for a chocolate flavor, there is a much easier and less risky solution: serve the ganache/chocolate sauce on the side. My perception is that the cake is primarily a centerpiece. As you say, there is another cake for adults. In my experience, kids are just as happy with a Hostess Ding Dong as they are with a fancy cake. Some people don't like chocolate, so by serving it on the side, you give them an option.

You could also use a poured melted chocolate.

This would provide a hard shell of chocolate. If you do not want to make your own one of the chocolate toppings made for ice cream would work. Heat in water bath until runny and pour over cake on wire rack on baking sheet to catch the runoff.