Happy Birthday Mary

My Step Father's Mother's 80th birthday is on Sunday. I was chosen to make her the birthday cake. This is what I came up with.

All of the fondant used on this cake was homemade because store bought fondant is both expensive and not very tasty.

How do you make homemade fondant? And how much does it cost to make your own, as appose to buying it?

In order to make your own fondant, all you need is a bag of powdered sugar, a bag of mini marshmallows, some water and a tiny bit of shortening to knead your fondant on, to prevent sticking. So it costs about $3.00 to make your own fondant that tastes good. It costs about $9.00 to buy it and it tastes horrible.

You microwave your marshmallows with the water, about 3 tablespoons of water for about 50 seconds, mix, return to the microwave and microwave for another 50 seconds, cook until melted. Add about 3/4's of the bag of powdered sugar to the bowl and mix until everything has come together, then dump the the mixture onto a flat surface that has been covered with shortening and knead until the fondant is malleable, this could take awhile. This is why most people just cave in and buy it. Once your fondant is fondant, you can add your coloring (I mix in my color into the melted marshmallow and water, before the powdered sugar, if I'm making a cake with mostly that one color,but you have to be careful about adding enough food coloring, the powdered sugar will dull down the color. You can store fondant in the fridge for weeks just as long as it's covered tightly in plastic wrap.

I also made my own cake board, guess how much cake boards cost? About 10 bucks... just for the board! So I went to the dollar store and got 2 foam boards that you would buy for a school project. I traced 3 10 inch circles, 2 circles on one board and 1 on the other and cut my circles out with an exacto knife. I sprayed a layer of a glue adhesive on the circles and stacked them. While that was drying I cut a 12 inch circle out of some aluminum foil, I had to use 2 overlayed sheets in order for the 12 inch circle to fit. I then covered my 3 foam sheet layered circle, that had been sprayed with more adhesive with the foil. And there you have it, cake board.

I ended up covering the royal icing m with a line of fondant, this is the finished cake.

This was the cake before I added the frill.

This was the emblem before I covered the royal icing initial with fondant