Our Adventure in Fondant

May 26, 2013

Our Adventure in Fondant

Our family has become slightly obsessed with the show Cake Boss, though we watch it on Netflix and we have currently watched every episode. I mean, the things they do with cake are amazing. We are just a little grossed out though at how much their hands are all over the pieces that go on to the cake, making us often comment, "I hope they wash their hands alot".

Our youngest daughter talks repeatedly about wanting to make a cake with fondant on it and for her 16th birthday wants to travel to Hoboken, NJ to visit Carlos's Bakery. Guess we better start saving. I told her that when I got back from my recent trip to Florida to visit family we would try it.

Well, sure enough as soon as I returned, she wanted to make it. It was a week later before I had the energy and time for us to do it. I had found some recipes online for marshmallow fondant (which sounded like it might taste better than the other stuff) and a friend of mine who decorates cakes uses the Marshmallow stuff and loves it. I headed to the store to buy the ingredients, got some great tips from my friend and we dove it. I found a recipe and other great tips from this site, coincidentally named Cake Boss. I actually have yet to look at the rest of her site, but this tutorial is great.

**DISCLAIMER: I apologize ahead of time for all of the pictures.

We decided on a two layer Red Velvet Cake. We were bad and bought a store bought cake. Though we did make our own buttercream frosting using this recipe, from Wiltons.

The fondant needs to be made and be able to set for several hours or overnight. Please just go to the website for how to make it. I'll put our thoughts down below the recipe and add pictures, but the above blog author does a great job explaining it.

Mixing in the food coloring and the powdered sugar

Here is the recipe for the fondant:

16 oz. mini marshmallows
2 lb. bag powdered sugar
1 tbs. water
1 tsp. corn syrup (optional)
1 tsp. lemon extract (optional)

I made a simple two layer cake and 1 batch of fondant was more than enough even though we made two batches because we were doing two colors. Next time I would use the recipe for one batch, but make it in halves or separate some of it right out of the microwave to make both colors.

kneading the fondant

My friend suggested adding the food coloring right when you take the melted marshmallow out of the microwave which is what we did and it made it really easy. We used the Wiltons gel food coloring and we were pleased with the vibrant colors, though like I said we had a lot leftover.

We didn't quite use a whole bag of powdered sugar in each batch. We did use the corn syrup, but not the extract (I didn't have any). When it got too hard to stir, we kneaded it by hand until it was just slightly warm but not too stiff. We've never worked with fondant so we weren't really sure what it should feel like so we guessed.

this was what it looked like after we finished kneading it.

We let our fondant sit overnight and when we took it out I had to pop it in the microwave in 5 second increments for about 15 seconds to get it to where it was workable. We set to work at rolling it out and getting it ready to lay over the cake which we had "dirty iced" with buttercream frosting.