How To Make Decorating Fondant for Cakes

Mix the mini marshmallows with the water in a microwave safe bowl, coating them as evenly as possible with the liquid. If you wish to make colored decorating fondant, add the food coloring at this point.

Then microwave the mixture for ten seconds.

Stir it to check for readiness - if all the lumps are gone once you stir it up, it is ready for the next step. If there are still lumps, microwave it again for another ten seconds. Stir until the lumps are gone.

If the color isn't almost twice as deep as you want the final color to be, add more food coloring and stir it in until the fondant is dark enough.

Add the cooking oil and stir it in thoroughly.

If you need to microwave it longer be very, very watchful and use very short increments of time as the mixture can easily be overcooked and become stringy.

Once you are able to stir out all the lumps add the powdered sugar in small batches to the hot marshmallow mixture stirring vigorously. Be very careful as this mixture may be extremely hot and sticky.

Trust me; if you get the mixture too hot it burns like the dickens if you get it stuck to your skin. It may not seem like all the sugar will stir into the marshmallows but I assure you, it will. By the time you've stirred in all the powdered sugar you can with your spoon, the fondant is usually pretty cool to the touch.

Once you've gotten all the powdered sugar stirred in allow the mixture to cool enough to be touched. Then grease your hands with a cooking oil and knead the mixture until it is smooth and somewhat similar in consistency to Play-Doh. If the fondant feels sticky instead of doughy, continue to add more powdered sugar until it feels doughy.

Now you can either use the fondant right away or store it for later use.

Lay down sheets of wax paper on your work surface and generously sprinkle them with powdered sugar to prevent the fondant from sticking. I use a tea strainer to to make a more-or-less even layer of powdered sugar.

An alternate method is to liberally grease the waxed paper with cooking oil. Don't combine the two methods.

Lay the fondant on top of the powdered or greased work surface.

Sprinkle fondant liberally with powdered sugar or, if using the oil method, liberally grease it with cooking oil.

Cover the fondant with another sheet of waxed paper.

Roll out the fondant with a rolling pin until it's as long as it needs to be to cover your cake.

Lift the top sheet of waxed paper and sprinkle powdered sugar onto the fondant. Then, flip the fondant over on the waxed paper and generously sprinkle it with more powdered sugar or rub with cooking oil if using the oil method.

Re-cover the fondant with waxed paper and roll it out in the other direction until it is wide enough to cover your cake.

The fondant can now be applied to your cake!

Don't panic, this can be fixed!

If the fondant sticks to the waxed paper, gently slide it up with a metal spatula. Then you can either powder it and flip it over, giving it a few gentle passes with a rolling pin to flatten it out or simply apply it with the "good" side up on the cake.

If all else fails you can wad it back up, spritz it with a little water and roll it out all over again.

Once you have a big, flat sheet of fondant you can use it to carefully cover your cake. I recommend using a traditional frosting in a light color to serve as an adhesive before applying the fondant. This recipe makes more than enough fondant to cover an 8-9" round cake or a similar surface area.

You can either dust off the excess powdered sugar for a matte finish or give the fondant a light mist spray of water to melt the sugar in and give the fondant a shiny look.

To shape the fondant decorations you can either mold them with your hands as if out of clay, you can cut them out with cookie cutters, or use a knife to cut out custom shapes as I did for the tiger cake. An exacto knife coated with cooking oil or non-stick cooking spray on its cutting blade works very well to cut out designs in this fondant.