Easy Marshmallow Fondant

Recently I have been super busy planning and executing baby D's second birthday party and since she is CRAZY over Max and Ruby I knew I HAD to incorporate these characters on this years cake. I am not a professional cake decorator by any stretch of the imagination, but I can't usually afford to spend $35 on a character cake so over the years I have made an attempt to make special cakes for my girls, like my grandma used to make for me.

This years cake was inspired by a slab cake I saw on Pintrest, and I wanted to attempt to make the characters out of fondant. Here's the inspiration cake:

Inspiration cake! I do not own the rights to this photo

I have been making my own fondant for years now. The moment I realized how fast and easy it is, it never crossed my mind again to spend needless money buying the expensive store bought variety, which in my opinion doesn't hold a candle to the homemade fondant in texture, workability or taste.

Homemade fondant is so easy, chances are you already have everything you need right in your baking pantry. Marshmallows, icing sugar and water. That's it. I mean you can add vanilla, food coloring or other flavored extracts to change the flavor of your fondant but the basic recipe is 3 main ingredients. How simple is that. Ready for me to make it even more simpler? Well buckle up Princess because we are making this fondant in the microwave. You are literally like 2 minutes away from your very own edible creations!

In a microwave safe bowl, add the water to the marshmallows and microwave in 30 second intervals, stirring in between until you reach a completely melted state. Stir in half of the icing sugar and stir until you cannot stir anymore! Now your "dough" is ready to knead. This mixture is SUPER sticky when there is not enough icing sugar incorporated but that is easy enough to remedy as you go along. You are going to knead the fondant like you would a bread dough, slowly adding in more sugar as you go along until you reach a smooth, soft consistency. That's it! You can add flavorings and food coloring to suit your projects. Now your fondant is ready to be rolled out to cover a cake to give it a truly polished look or you can make little edible characters to add as a topper, but remember to cover your fondant or seal in an air tight container to maintain it's flexibility.

I bought a small amount of Wilton Fondant to compare the two (out of morbid curiosity) and here are the results;

The homemade marshmallow fondant on the left is whiter and less oily in consistency. The Wilton Fondant is much softer, I found it difficult to make characters out of, even flat characters like the ones I created on Baby D's cake, they seemed to droop a lot and not want to hold their shape, it retails for $3.99 for 4 oz at my local Bulk Barn, which is probably pretty equivalent to the amount I spent on the marshmallow fondant supplies, which yielded me probably 7 times as much fondant. I even had tons left over that I didn't end up needing. My point is, the savings are real people!

One of the perks of making your own fondant and saving money is you can afford to make lots of mistakes (like I did) and multiple attempts. I did not have to worry about running out and having to rush to the store to purchase more.

Attempts 1, 2 & 3.

The fondant was easy to make, color, roll out, cut and worked well with the Wilton Edible Markers. The final product, put a huge smile on Baby D's face and it was well worth the extra effort!