Stay at Home Who?: Conquering Fondant

I mentioned a while back that I will be making Baby Boo's birthday cake just like I have all of Little Dude's. I also mentioned that I want to try to use fondant this time around. Since fondant is notorious for being difficult to work with, I figured I better not leave things until the weekend of the party. I found this recipe for homemade fondant on the Bake at 350 blog. There are several similar recipes floating around the internet and they all claimed to be much yummier than store-bought fondant. This sounded great to me since most fondant tastes like a bland, gummy, mess.

Last Friday I figured I would go ahead and give it a shot.
I pulled up the recipe and grabbed my ingredients. The first step was to grease a glass bowl with some Crisco:

Next I threw a 1 pound bag of mini marshmallows into the bowl along with 3 tablespoons of water:

In the microwave it went for 30 seconds. When that was up, I stirred them a little. They were mostly unchanged except for some slightly melty bits in the very middle:

Another 30 seconds in the microwave:

After the 3rd time in the microwave:

The 4th 30 second increment in the microwave was the magic number for me. The marshmallows were one big sticky puddle of glop after stirring:

I had a 2 pound bag of powdered sugar waiting in a bowl. I poured in the marshmallow glop and started my electric beaters:

Now, I unfortunately do not own a standing mixer - I will someday, but for now I have a simple set of handheld electric beaters and I don't have paddle attachments. Problem is, this recipe calls for a paddle attachment and it does so for a very good reason. The marshmallow glop is so sticky that it rides up the regular beaters like crazy. This makes it very difficult to keep the beaters clean, and to properly mix the ingredients. If you are in my shoes, I recommend greasing your hand up really well with Crisco and carefully helping to keep the glop from riding up the beaters - turning off the beaters while you are touching them off course. This was a messy and kind of annoying wrestling experience, but after a few minutes I had a nice ball of stuff that actually resembled fondant:

I kneaded it with my well greased hands. Then I split off a few pieces and colored them:

I also recommend using lots of powdered sugar all over your work surface because this stuff is unforgivingly sticky. Once colored, I greased up the fondant balls and threw each one into a Ziplock baggy. The bags went into the fridge for at least a couple of hours. I don't think it would have been possible to work with the stuff right off bat and not lose my sanity.

I made a cake and left it to cool after making the fondant.

Later that day I pulled the fondant out of the fridge and rolled it out so that it was about 1/4 - 1/8 of an inch thick:

It was SOOOOOOO much easier to work with after sitting in the fridge for a few hours. It rolled out like a dream and was not prone to sticking or tearing at all. I did use plenty of powdered sugar on my work surface to ensure that the sticking would not be a problem. Once I had a nice big sheet rolled out I gently lifted it and draped it across the cake I had made earlier:

I then tucked the fondant around the cake and cut the edges with a sharp knife:

Finally, I did some very simple decorating with the colored fondant:

I wasn't going for a masterpiece, I just wanted to get a quick idea for easy the fondant was to work with. There was a lot of fondant left over, about half actually. The rest got thrown back in the fridge for future use, it lasts forever I guess. . . or at least a couple of months.

We tried the cake when the hubs got home that evening and it was indeed rather yummy. I can't say that it rivals buttercream, but this fondant was far from the gross fondants I had always known previously and had always peeled off of cakes before eating them. Hubby actually liked it a lot. I think it was overall a success and I definitely plan to use it for Baby Boo's birthday cake. I will be putting a buttercream filling in hers though so that it isn't so dry. I'm excited to see how that comes out once early September rolls around. Now I just need to decide on the colors and decore!

I will once again leave you all with some more cake eye candy courtesy of Pinterest: