How To Make Sweet And Easy Decorating Fondant For Cakes

Updated on May 12, 2017 Kylyssa Shay moreKylyssa is an artist who works in a wide variety of media that has included fondant since 2008. She enjoys creating and sharing sweet tips. Fondant is like edible modeling clay. It can be shaped, colored, cut or molded. It can turn a plain cake into a work of art.

This pliable icing used to be something seldom used by amateurs, but with the advent of cake shows, fondant and other culinary ideas once relegated to professionals have moved right into our living rooms. If you've seen Ace of Cakes or Cake Boss you've seen some in use. A baker can make real works of art with the use of a little modeled sugary decoration.

However, commercial, pre-made fondant can be expensive and frankly doesn't taste very good. With some experimentation, much of it very messy, quite unappetizing and downright dangerous, I've arrived at a simple and inexpensive alternative to the commercial version that is surprisingly easy to work with. 10 per cake even including the initial outlay for a multicolor box of food coloring. 5 per cake on fondant ingredients, even for cakes with a dozen colors of it!

All photos on this page by Kylyssa Shay unless otherwise credited. Since microwaves vary greatly in power be careful handling the melted marshmallows. They may get hot enough to burn you and at this stage they will stick to you like culinary napalm. One batch makes enough fondant to cover a double layered, eight inch round cake.

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 a colored finished product, add the food coloring at this point. Microwave the mixture for ten seconds or until they first begin to melt.

If the marshmallows have not begun melting, microwave in increments of ten seconds until they do. Watch the process closely; you do not want to overcook the marshmallows because their consistency can turn stringy or the mixture can get too hot, creating a sticky burn hazard. Stir the mixture to check for readiness - if all the lumps are gone once you stir it up for about thirty seconds, 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 mixture is dark enough. Add the cooking oil and stir it in thoroughly. If you need to microwave the mixture longer be very, very watchful and use very short increments of time as it 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, it is usually pretty cool to the touch.



It takes a lot of stirring to incorporate the sugar into the melted marshmallows. The fondant gets hard to stir just before it's time to start kneading it. 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.