Soften (if applicable) and knead your fondant to make it more pliable. Be sure your hands are VERY clean!

Roll out your fondant and cover your chilled cake, taking care to smooth it all out from the centre out and down, eliminating any air bubbles as you go.

Use your hands to carefully mold the fondant down around the sides, flaring out from the base.

Use a small wheel pizza cutter to trim the excess fondant from the base of the cake.

Re-knead your fondant and roll it out quite thin - about ⅛" inch thick. You want to strike a balance between being strong enough to stand up, and thin enough to not look clunky.

Use your choice of cutter to cut out a bunch of leaf or petal shapes from the rolled fondant. Ball up the excess and wrap in plastic wrap - you’ll be re-rolling it and cutting more, as you run out!

Flip a couple of your leaves over, and brush the “lower” half of each with a little water.

Press each against the cake, so that the dry part of the underside is sticking up over the edge of the cake, as pictured.

Repeat all the way around the cake, varying the angles of the leaves.

Once you’ve made it the whole way around, repeat with another layer, down a bit from the first - as pictured.

Again, vary the angles of the leaves, overlap them randomly, etc.

For the final row of vertical leaves, use your pizza wheel or a knife to cut across the bottom of several leaves, before applying them. This straight edge will go along the bottom of the cake, touching the cake plate.

Alternatively, you can position whole leaves overlapping onto the plate, and just trim the excess when you’re done.

I like to go back with one final row of leaves to form a horizontal border, as shown.

Shortly before serving, pile the top of the cake with fruit of your choice.