I won't stop until it's *almost* perfect....

Let's just say.. I'm a perfectionist when it comes to many things, especially cooking. When something is not right, I have the strongest urge to throw it out, but for the sake of time and effort, I didn't. This cake was difficult from the beginning, maybe I'm just not used to cooking in the kitchen at home. I want my gas stove/oven back!

Oh sweet, sweet, fondant.. you were SO easy to work with the first time I made you... now it's like disaster after disaster... I feel like I make 2 cakes every time I play with fondant... what gives?!

Maybe I jinxed it while talking about my love for baking in my secondary... what a way to kill my hobby : (

I think I first found out what fondant was probably around 10 years ago when I was watching food network. Needless to say, I fell in love. I knew that my future wedding cake will be fondant, and really really over the top : ) Just as long as I can afford it, I mean I'm pretty sure my cake will be probably...around 1K : D but that's years from now... hmph. Fondant cakes are so beautiful, so elegant, and looks so effortless. Hm. Not really. It wasn't until last Feb when I finally got the courage to try this, and well, I have made 8 cakes since... that's not too much, but really I don't make cakes unless it's for a special occasion. I have a ton of baking stuff just for fondant, including the roller, the alphabet, prepackaged fondant for when I'm really really lazy, and various cutouts, I love building collections of baking stuff :). I found this recipe ( before it was posted on allrecipes.com) on Marshmallow Fondant. I knew fondant didn't taste really good, and it was pretty expensive at Michaels. Marshmallow fondant was the perfect "cheap" way to mimic this cake decorating technique. Plus, I like to make things from scratch.. I think I just like to control my ingredients. My first trial was beautiful... then the next few ones fell apart. I either had too much sugar, not enough marshmallows, or too much water not enough...... I don't know. Marshmallow fondant is not the easiest thing to work it... especially for a perfectionist who loves clean lines and clean cakes.

The cake above was my sister's birthday cake. The design I was aiming for was a spiral ribbon design around the edges that ended up in a big elegant bow. Hm... that didn't seem to work out. at all... problem? .. well there were many! I wanted to make a small cake so I went to Michaels and bought a 6 inch pan, hoping to get a nice tall cake, if I placed waxed paper around the top. I got a nice tall cake, I'm not sure if it's actually cooked inside, I'm sure it's super dry around the outside, and maybe under cooked int he middle , whoops. I don't know if I'd want to stray from my typical 9 in, 8 in, or cupcakes anymore, I'm too familiar with that. Not only was the cake difficult int he oven, it was difficult to mix, something about glass measuring cups + me = disaster. I feel like they just don't measure "enough" .. I think I just have a heavy hand when it comes to scooping our flour and such...sigh.

Now onto the fondant. I went to my baking box to grab my brand new bag of marshmallow, to see that tiny red ants have found a home in all of my baking supplies. wth, it was BRAND NEW! So I went to the store and bought a bag of marshmallow, come back home to check on my Crisco... and wth ants have invaded that as well! Since when do ants LOVE grease??? Sigh. I used butter, that was just weird, because butter has a flavor, unlike plain old shortening.

Now onto the making of fondant. In short, it stuck to all surfaces, my cornstarch box was in the trash due to the ant infestation, so I was left to sprinkle powdered sugar on my surface. That was a no no. I had to re-rolled my dough probably 6 times b4 it was like hard...and no fondant is NOT supposed to be hard. : ( at the end, I scratched my plans to make a beautiful bow cake and opted for dainty daisies because that was ridiculously easy to make, what's easier than stamping out daisies and placing them onto the cake? But remember I am a perfectionist, I didn't want to give my sister an ugly, messy cake, so.. I painted each of the daisies with water to clean off all the powdered sugar residue, and voila, a bridal shower cake is born. HAHA maybe i'll try another day with the bow decor, I think I will attempt a square cake, that seems a lot easier... cuz really placing a flat sheet of thin dough onto a round cake = creases and breakage. I won't show the back of the cake, ever, because there isn't one : ) Yes my cake is basically pretty... for only 270 degrees of the view. : D

Here's a close up of the cake/ daisies with flash.. Typically I like to roll out my decorations pretty thinly, but I think the petals would have broken off if I did that with this design

Marshmallow Fondant
Makes Enough for Cover a 6 inch cake + simple decorations

1.5 cups mini- marshmallows
1.5 tbsp water
crisco for the hands!
2.5 cups powdered sugar
Plenty of cornstarch for dusting

1. Heat marshmallows in microwave for 30 seconds ( until it puffs)
2. stir, until smooth
3. add in almost all powdered sugar, stir, and transfer onto a non stick baking surface
4. OIL HANDS WITH CRISCO!!!!!!!! And then.. knead with remaining powdered sugar
5. Wrap up and put into the fridge until ready to use ( when ready to use microwave for like 5 seconds to make it more pliable, fondant can be kept in the fridge for weeks.. )
6. Sprinkle CLEAN working area with cornstarch, and roll out the fondant, move the fondant around a LOT to insure that it hasn't stuck to the surface, yes it even sticks to silpat, that silpat has given me soo many headaches + fire alarms.... makes me wonder what the big hype is about that thing.

* You can knead in liquid coloring, but may have to add in more sugar, don't add too much though, it can ruin your cake and make it "wet"
* never put fondant in the fridge after you have transferred it to your cake
* always pre-frost your cake with butter cream before placing on the fondant, no glue = no stick, : ) Just a thin layer will do ...
* always keep the fondant covered, it will dry out
* if your fondant gets to hard, microwave it for less than 10 seconds at a time, this has a lot of sugar so it doesn't take much to heat it up!

And voila, simple fondant, now the hard part is transferring it to your cake I guess I"ll watch Ace of Cakes or Food Network Challenge to learn more about their techniques. :-)