My son turned 1 last week and I thought that I'd take a crack at making him a birthday cake. Being that we took about a gazillion pictures of our first born and we have not even half the amount of space filled on the hard drives with pictures of him, I thought that I'd do something worth while for the kid. And, I know that he won't remember it, but I don't want him to look at the "ten pictures" that we took of him the first year of his life and say, hey, didn't you guys care about me?! Now I can answer that with a big fat YES, because I made him a birthday cake, when I bought his sisters at Costco.
1 16 oz. bag marshmallows
2 Tablespoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 2 lbs. bag powdered sugar
Crisco
Food Coloring
Place marshmallows in a microwave friendly bowl with water and vanilla. Microwave for 1 minute, remove from microwave and stir in unmelted marshmallows. Place back in microwave for 30 seconds, stirring each time until all marshmallows are melted completely. It will be very sticky. Heavily grease a mixing bowl with crisco and place melted marshmallows in bowl. Using a mixer, (I used my kitchen aid) stir in powdered sugar. Heavily grease a counter surface. The fondant will get fairly difficult for the mixer to stir, once you notice it getting difficult for the mixer, remove fondant from mixing bowl and place on the heavily greased counter surface. Knead as you would bread dough on the grease surface, adding crisco every time the fondant starts to stick to the counter, for about 1-2 minutes, or until it's the consistency of taffy. Wrap well in saran wrap and place in the fridge for at least 12 hours, but it can store for up to 2 weeks.
Once you remove it from the fridge grease the counter surface with crisco again and knead, continuing to add crisco until it is a workable consistency. Add food coloring and continue to knead until all food coloring is incorporated. (You can try to add the food coloring before storing it in the fridge, but it might change the consistency of the fondant and/or bleed food coloring onto other surfaces, or both. So, storing the fondant without the food coloring is what I would recommend if you want the best results possible.) The fondant at this stage might be too greasy to work with, if that happens, then sprinkle some corn starch onto the counter top and knead fondant with the corn starch until it's a workable consistency. Roll fondant out with a rolling pin until it is about 19" round for an 8" round or 19" square for a 8" square layered cake. Frost your layered cake with butter cream frosting before placing fondant on top, the frosting will act as a glue for the fondant to stick to. Fold fondant in half and place the fold in the middle of the cake then unfold over the remaining cake that is exposed. Smooth out fondant and trim edges.
Note: This recipe makes enough to cover two (2) 8" layered cakes, so if you only make one layered cake, then half the recipe.
