Fondant Autumn Cake Tutorial With Step-by-step Pictures

Here’s a tutorial on how to make a fondant Autumn Cake. I will explain all the techniques and necessary tools to get an Autumn Cake.

If you’re thinking about making an Autumn Cake, this tutorial with step-by-step pictures can help you create your own Autumn Cake at home.

I admit it doesn’t feel like Autumn yet in my land, but I hope that’s going to change soon. Autumn can give us a lot of inspiration. Tree leaves fall and green forests become an ocean of warm colours, going from an intense yellow to the darkest brown, through a whole range of reds, burgundies and oranges. Meadows, dried by the burning sun of August, turn into lands watered by rains and mushrooms and insects appear, wisely sensing the arrival of Winter. All these elements can help you design an Autumn themed cake.

Autumn Cake step-by-step

I will show you all the tricks to get this Autumn Cake, but you can make your own design. The most important thing is to be encouraged to make your own creations. As you can see on the picture, this time I wanted to play with textures and autumnal realism and this design became the reproduction of a section of a forest.

Techniques that you will apply on this autumnal cake

Realistic wood texture. The trunk is handmade.
Powder paint on fondant
Modelling different types of mushrooms with moisture effect
Creation of realistic moss and aerographing
Leaves with Flower and Modelling Paste

Essential tools for the Autumn Cake

Before we get started, you’ll need to prepare the following tools:

1 Cake drum (25cm diameter)
1 Dummy (12,5cm diameter + 10cm high) or cakes of 12,5cm diameter, cake filling and ganache
1 wire (gauge 20)
Set of basic modelling tools (I use the Sugar Shapers by Innovative Sugarworks)
Some brushes
Khaki green satin ribbon
Leaf cutter and texturizer set
Small rolling pin
Pizza cutter
Spike brush

List of edibles

350gr of Fondant Renshaw Extra coloured with ProGel Eucalyptus
350gr of Fondant Renshaw Extra coloured with Progel Caramel + ProGel Brown
20gr of Renshaw Flower & Modelling Paste coloured with ProGel Brown
15gr of Flower & Modelling Paste coloured with ProGel Cream
15gr of Flower & Modelling Paste coloured with ProGel Sunflower
25gr of Flower & Modelling Paste coloured with ProGel Terracotta
Vanilla cake, crumbled in big pieces
ProGel Holly Green and Gooseberry (for aerographing)
Rainbow Dust Chocolate, Mustard, Orange Burst and Autumn Green
Edible Glue by Rainbow Dust
Corn syrup by Karo
Glaze and Glaze Cleaner by Rainbow Dust

Step-by-step recipe and tips for making the cake

1. Colour 350gr of fondant Renshaw Extra with ProGel Eucalyptus.

2. Extend the fondant and cover the base. Texturize the fondant with a silicone texturizer with an irregular shape (I myself did the one on the picture).

3. With a Dresden tool, make some spiral marks on the fondant to give it more relief.

4. Colour 350gr of fondant Renshaw Extra with a mixture of ProGel Caramel and ProGel Brown).

5. Make a small ball with the fondant, stretch it and cover the top of the dummy.

6. With the same tool we used before, make some circular marks to simulate the tree trunk rings.

7. Stretch the rest of the fondant and make a strip (11cm high x 45cm length). To get a tree bark texture, you need to make some marks with a pizza cutter first.

8. With a spike brush, scratch the fondant until you get an irregular texture.

9. Put some edible glue on the lateral of the dummy and stick the fondant on it.

10. To get a good brown tone, mix some Rainbow Dust Chocolate and some Rainbow Dust Mustard. Shade all the gaps and cracks and also the upper part of the trunk.

11. Colour 20gr of Flower & Modelling Paste by Renshaw with ProGel Brown to make the mushrooms.

12. Make a sharp pointed half moon with the paste and make some marks on the underside. Paint the upper side of the soon-to-be mushroom with Rainbow Dust Chocolate.

13. Glue the mushrooms to the trunk and varnish them with some glaze.

14. Once the varnish is dry, brush some corn syrup on them to get a moisture effect.

15. Colour some Flower & Modelling Paste with the ProGels Cream, Sunflower and Terracotta to make the leaves and a second type of mushrooms.

16. Cut different types of leaves. Put the leaves on a foam pad and sharpen the edges of the leaves with a ball tool.

17. Texturize the leaves with a universal leaf silicone texturizer.

18. Make small teardrops with some Sunflower coloured paste and prick a piece of wire inside of them in order to make the bottom of the mushrooms.

19. Colour the bottom of the mushrooms with Rainbow Dust Orange Burst.

20. Make the cap of the mushrooms, just like we did the other ones. Varnish them with some Rainbow Dust Glaze.

21. Prick the mushrooms on the cake base.

22. Crumble some cake (it must have a light colour, so don’t use a chocolate cake or a Red Velvet). Airbrush the crumbled cake with ProGel Gooseberry and ProGel Holly Green diluted in Vodka.

23. Glue it to the base, just under the trunk.

24. Once they’re dry, paint the leaves with a mixture of the Brown and Orange colorants we’ve already used. Glue the leaves randomly.

25. You can model as many details as you want. I did a worm and a slug eating some of the leaves. Feel free and let your imagination fly.

I hope you liked this tutorial and I also hope that you’ve been able to implement the tricks and necessary techniques to get realistic textures.

Are you looking for a Halloween tutorial?

On my next posts you’ll find a grimmer type of tutorials, as Halloween’s coming soon, so don’t forget to leave a comment and give me some ideas for a Halloween tutorial! If you venture to make this autumnal cake and you have any doubts, you can also leave a comment here or on my social media.

See you soon!

Marc Suárez