My soon-to-be 4-year old asked for a “Candy Cake” for his birthday. Sounded easy enough. After all, last year, he had a steaming volcano cake with home made palm trees and dry ice. “This year I’m getting off easy,” I thought to myself. Until Yesterday.
Yesterday, he decided he wanted an Angry Birds cake. Well…that was going to be a little more challenging and I only had one day to do it! What to do? I actually turned to this website, like always, for inspiration. Sure enough, there were plenty of Angry Birds cakes to choose from. The problem is, I always use toys to decorate my cakes.
It’s very time efficient, but this time it was just too late and I couldn’t get my hands on any toys. So, reluctantly, sigh, I succumbed to the ultimate hardship – fondant. Now, I tried fondant once and it was a nightmare. It took more patience than I have. But this time I decided it had been about 3 years since I had tried it and I was ready.
I don’t live near any stores that sell it, so I have to make my own. It doesn’t seem wise to use Wikipedia to learn how to make fondant, but there were so many pictures! And I am a visual learner. I was sold!
And so begins my first success story of marshmallow fondant and how even the most resistant to fondant can do it! For this cake, I used two cake mixes. But, to make the mix go further, I adapted one mix as follows:
- 1 yellow cake mix
- 1 small box chocolate pudding
- 1 cup of vanilla yogurt
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup oil
- 4 eggs
- 3/4 cup water
The other box of yellow cake mix I just followed the instructions:
- I baked 2 8″ rounds
- 1 6″ round (for the nest)
- 2 small oven safe bowls for the angry red bird
I froze all the cake to help with icing. I then made a 2 lb bag of confectioners sugar butter cream icing. 2 sticks butter. 1/4 cup shortening. Milk to desired consistency.
The fondant was a mess! But it turned out great!
- 1 1/2 packages of large marshmallows (16 oz)
- 2 lbs of confectioners sugar
- As much shortening as kneeded! Ha! That’s a joke because you have to kneed it for 8 minutes!
Anyway, put shortening all over your work surface. Dump out 2/3 of your bag of confectioners sugar over top of the shortening. Put all your marshmallows and two tablespoons of water in a bowl and heat in microwave at 30 second increments for about two minutes stirring until melted. Pour marshmallow mixture over confectioners sugar and kneed.
Rub shortening on your hands through out so it doesn’t stick. When you can make it in to balls like Playdough, color with food coloring and continue to kneed adding sugar and shortening as needed. If it gets too brittle just add some water.
As you can see, my fondant was a huge success! Go me! 36 years old and still learning new tricks. If I can do it, you can probably do it better!
So I put both of my “bowls” together to create my red bird. I cut the end off a sugar cone for his nose and covered it with fondant. Buttercream small star tip for our friend and I just happened to have a bag of feathers laying around! Eyes are fondant with icing details.
I bought the “eyes” for all my little guys. My grocery store finally started carrying more baking supplies! Thank goodness! I used leftover tootsie rolls from Halloween, woppers, and cookie sprinkles for the broken beams.
All in all, it took me less than one day to put it all together! A day well spent! Happy baking friends. And I am proof that you really can teach an old dog new tricks!
