Fond o' Fondant

• Fondant is made by heating a sugar mixture and then beating it when it cools to a predetermined temperature, giving it a soft and malleable texture rather like modeling clay. It's what cake decorators use to give their cakes a perfectly smooth, even satiny surface that's almost impossible to achieve with buttercream or other forms of icing. For standard-sized cakes it's usually rolled to 1/4 inch thick, which makes it sturdy enough to lift and manipulate without tearing under its own weight. It's also thick enough to give a professionally flat appearance, even if the cake beneath hasn't been perfectly leveled.

Scaling It Down

• With mini cakes, a 1/4-inch of fondant can be too much to conveniently work with. It's too thick to wrap around the small corners and edges of a mini cake, and the weight of the fondant itself can be a problem. Dense fruit cakes and pound cakes can stand up to its weight, but lighter cakes are too fragile and might be compressed or even crushed as you're applying the covering. For mini cakes of six inches or less in diameter, it's often better to roll your fondant to half that thickness, or 1/8 inch.

Thick and Thin

• Reliably rolling fondant that thinly isn't easy to do, but most craft or cake supply stores carry special rolling pins specifically for fondant. They're typically made of silicone, which gives the fondant a perfectly flat, even finish. More to the point, they come with color-coded bands in different thicknesses that fit over the ends of the rolling pin. With a pair of 1/8-inch bands in place, even a minimally skilled amateur can turn out a round or oblong of perfectly thin, even fondant to cover a mini cake.

Getting It Done

• Start by coating your cakes with a thin layer of buttercream, then refrigerating them until it sets. This "crumb coat" helps keep crumbs from spreading, evens the surface of the cake, and acts as a sort of glue to hold the fondant in place. Place each mini cake on your work surface and cover it with a sheet of the thin fondant. Smooth it carefully from the center to the edges, using a small spatula or a gloved finger, then press it to the sides of your cake. At the corners of a square or rectangular mini cake, or periodically around the edge of a round cake, you'll need to fold the fondant and cut off the excess. Smooth the cut areas with your finger or spatula until they're unnoticeable.

Petit-Fours

• The smallest mini cakes of all are tiny, single-bite petit-fours. They're made by cutting a plain or filled cake into bite-sized shapes, then covering them with a special pourable fondant. This gives the cakes a very thin, delicate shell of icing, typically tinted in pastel colors to conceal the cake underneath. You can dip your cakes into the warm fondant if you wish, but that takes lots of skill and a keen eye for crumbs. It's usually easier to put the petit-fours on a rack and pour the fondant carefully over them. Poured fondant can be made from scratch, or purchased from craft stores and cake decorating suppliers.