Conversation Hearts Mini-Cakes

This is a pourable fondant project from the Wilton Site that I tried out.
Basically you bake a cake in a jelly roll pan and then cut out heart shapes. Ice with some buttercream and then pour colored fondant over the cakes. Finally you write the sayings in red icing. Sounded easy enough.
Since it is Valentine's I made these with extra spicy Gingerbread cake for the BF.
Also I had buttermilk left over from the baseball cake. The colors didn't quite turn out to be the pastel shades I was aiming for, but they are still pretty cute. The cake was delicious, the icing was a little sweet for my taste, but they were a big hit with everyone. Especially my surprise overnight visitor on the Valentines Eve.

BUTTERMILK GINGERBREAD
1/4 cup softened butter
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup molasses
1 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoon ground ginger
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground caradamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup buttermilk

Line jelly roll pan with parchment paper leaving a 1 inch overhang for lifting the cake out later. Then spray the parchment with baking spray containing flour.

Combine butter, sugar, egg, and molasses and beat with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Mix flour well with soda and spices. Add alternately with buttermilk to molasses mixture, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Pour into jelly roll pan. Bake at 3500F for 30 minutes.
(If you don't want to use this recipe for this project reduce the buttermilk to 1/2 cup and use a 9 inch pan.)

Allow cake to cool and remove cake from pan using the overhangs of the parchment paper. Use a heart cookie cutter to cut out little heart cakes.

Quick "Buttercream"
for the first layer of icing I just beat together 1 cup of powdered sugar with 1/2 cup of butter

Pourable Fondant

Ingredients:
6 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted (1 1/2 lbs.)
1/2 cup water (4 ounces)
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla
gel icing colors


Place sugar in saucepan. Combine water and corn syrup. Add to sugar and stir until well mixed. Place over low heat. Don't allow temperature of fondant to exceed 100°F. Remove from heat, stir in flavor and divide in Icing Color. I attempted to generate pink purple and pastel green, but they weren't quite pastel. To cover cake, place cake or cookies on cooling grid over a drip pan. Pour fondant into center and work towards edges. Touch up bare spots with spatula. Let set. Excess fondant can be reheated.

I used purchased red gel icing to write the words, it didn't hold up after a day or two. Royal Icing would have worked better, but I wasn't sure if I could get it red enough.