Crochet: A Piece of Cake

My in-laws came to visit last weekend and we had a great time! Over the weekend, we celebrated my mother-in-law's birthday. She loves to knit and crochet, so I decided I wanted to make her a cake with balls of yarn and a crochet hook. I started looking around online and quickly realized I may have chosen a daunting task. I have to say in a lot of ways, this was one of my more challenging cakes. But, I was pleased with how it turned out, and most importantly, my mother-in-law loved it!

My husband was a huge lifesaver with this cake. He happened to be off and was able to bake the cake and get a coat of icing on it before I got home from work. There's no way I would have finished in time without that. It was his first time making a cake by himself, that was completely from scratch. I was impressed with how it turned out! 

This cake had two main components, the fondant yarn balls/hook and then the buttercream basket weave. Today I'm going to show you how to do the fondant yarn balls, and next Monday I will show you how to do the basket weave.

When I started looking around online, I saw many cake ideas that used long, thin ropes of fondant to cover the fondant balls to look like yarn. I found a tool online to do this, but it cost about $80. I got to thinking though, and decided a Play Doh tool might work as well. You may recall I recently wrote about this exact topic.

So here's how I made the crochet toppers.

• I started with two balls of fondant in the desired color. I made them both the size I wanted for the actual balls.

• Set up the Play Doh tool so that the fondant will be pushed out into thin ropes
• Grease the Play Doh tool with shortening to keep it from sticking 

• Knead the fondant to make it more pliable and a little thinner
• Slowly, push the fondant out through the small holes. Push it out until its about 1.5-2 inch long

•  Cut the fondant ropes off the tool
• Attach the thin ropes (about 6-8 at a time) using gum glue (fondant or gum glue dissolved in water)

• Keep attaching sections of the rope, overlapping the sections in different directions
• Repeat the process for the other balls, using different colors if desired.
• To make the crochet hook, roll out a thin rope of silver fondant. Pinch over one end of the rope to make it look like a hook.
• To finish it off, I made a few more pieces of blue fondant rope to add some pieces of yarn to add around the cake.