My experience with fondant

Last weekend was our anniversary and I decided I would make a cake with fondant to celebrate. This was my first fondant experience and it was less painful than expected. I thought it was going to be terribly tedious, messy, and not all tasty. Really, fondant has been all about appearance in my past experiences. It's just so pretty! The fondant I made was super easy, not terribly messy (not any more so than sugar cookies), and tasted pretty good. Please don't judge me and these terrible photos. Fondant is a bit tricky to place on the cake. I put a few holes in the bottom white layer (that's why I put those leaves on the cake). I also didn't know what to do with the bottom of the cake so I rolled little balls and put them on the bottom. They don't look great, but it was my first time. Another thing I learned is that you should not use chocolate buttercream on the cake! You put a layer of buttercream on your cake before covering with fondant so the fondant will stick. Well, I made a chocolate cake so I thought chocolate buttercream would taste the best. It tasted good, but was a pain with the white fondant because I kept getting on the pretty whiteness. Lesson learned. All in all I thought it turned out decent for my first try. Pictures and recipe below.

Marshmallow Fondant

1/4 cup shortening

1 (16 ounce) package of mini marshmallows

4 tbs water

1 tsp vanilla

2 pounds confectioner's sugar

Put the marshmallows in a microwave safe bowl and heat for 30 seconds to 1 minute to start melting the marshmallows. Stir in the vanilla and water and stir until smooth. Slowly beat in cups of confectioner's sugar until you have a sticky dough. Reserve one cup of powdered sugar for kneading. The dough is really stiff at this stage.


I then put shortening all over my stand mixer dough attachment and let the stand mixer knead the fondant until it was smooth. I added a bit more powdered sugar. I let the mixer knead for about 5 minutes. If you're kneading by hand it will take longer. The dough should no longer be sticky but more of a play dough consistency.

Wrap the fondant into plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge. The recipe I was using said to let it be overnight, but I only did for an hour and it was fine. When you take it out let it get to room temperature before trying to roll it out. I sprinkled corn starch on the counter to prevent sticking when I rolled out the dough.

Before placing the fondant on the cake ice the cake with about 1/4 inch layer of buttercream. This will allow the fondant to stick. I made different colors of fondant by kneading in gel food coloring. I noticed the color got darker the longer it sat, so just know that when you're coloring your fondant. I rolled the fondant out to about 1/4 inch thickness. This seemed to work well and let plenty of fondant for a two layer round cake.