Wow, it is almost Christmas so I decided I should make a holiday-themed project. That being said and since I am a tad bit late in coming to the sugarcrafting party, I needed an idea that would not take a lot of time to create. So, when I saw a few beautiful Christmas cakes fashioned to look like an ornament, I knew that they would be my inspiration. It seemed like the perfect seasonal project which one could then add to the top of a cake or, if one wanted to, just display it as is on a cake plate (which is what I did). There is also an added bonus which is these baubles can easily be personalized, making them perfect for a holiday wedding, birthday, etc. With mine I decided to celebrate my new granddaughter, Violet’s, first Christmas making this gumpaste/fondant ornament a lovely (and loving) keepsake. I should mention that I have always had a soft spot for these festive dioramas and I hope that making one of your own will bring out the child in you too! 

Hints for Making a Concave Gumpaste/Fondant Christmas Ornament

As I stated above you can customize this ornament to your and/or your customer’s liking. This means there is no need to restrict yourself to the usual red & green coloring of Christmas. I did exactly that when I instead used soft pastel colors of violet and pink.

Another deviation from the norm that you might consider is substituting the usual plain, round shape and make one with a concave center. This is really fun because you can then add something extra special inside the hollowed-out opening. It could be a Santa, a sleigh, a snowman, a Christmas tree or even a little white, lop-eared snow bunny.

For mine I used a Styrofoam ball. However, if you want yours to be edible then you could use some Rice Krispie treats instead. For me the hardest part of the project was figuring out how to cover the concave opening with fondant neatly and without allowing any air bubbles to occur. At first I tried adding my rolled-out piece the normal way by placing it on my turntable and laying the fondant over the top and working my way down to the bottom. No matter how I tried I could not get it to look right, realizing I had to deal with all the surplus fondant at the bottom. The result was that the snow bunny’s cave no longer looked concave. I was finally in business once I realized not to treat this as a regular ball shape and try a different technique. I found that if laid the bottom of a piece of rolled-out fondant over the hollowed-out portion and “slowly” ease it into the center I could then take the top of the piece that was now situated on the outside of the ornament and smooth it down the sides until I ended up on the center of the backside. I still had some surplus fondant at this point and since I was working from front to back instead of top to bottom it was located at the back of the ornament. I suppose there are many of you out there who can deal with this unwanted fondant and make it look as if were never there, but I am not one of them. My solution was to create a gumpaste disc and glue it over the top of the fondant flaw making the perfect convex cover up of my sugarcrafting sin. I ended up personalizing the disc in hopes that no one would be the wiser that I was trying to camouflage something. Can you keep my secret?