A few months ago I got on a cookie making kick.
My experience in cookie making up to that point was basically…welp, I had no experience. I also didn’t know how to make royal icing or even what goes into making royal icing. Piping bags made me shudder and why would you want to frost a cookie anyway?
And who really needs cookies when there’s bacon? Am I right or am I right?
Then I made the boneheaded move of signing up to make X-shaped cookies for Ollie’s class.
OF COURSE I knew how to do that! OF COURSE I didn’t hate making sugar cookies and OF COURSE all my attempts at sugar cookies hadn’t failed epically.
And OF COURSE I didn’t say any of that. I would make those cookies work!
And ya know what? They didn’t turn out half bad. Sure, they weren’t perfect but they weren’t hideous either and they tasted good.
Amy – 1 Cookies – 0
Basically all that is a post for another day and I’ve gotten a lot better and I’ll post some pictures and schtuff since I know not all of you follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr and those places are where the cookie journey (or whatever you want to call it) has been chronicled.
If anything, the cookie thing has shown me that I kind of don’t suck at this baking/decorating thing and all of that gave me the confidence to try a “fancy” cake.
No reason. Just because I wanted to.
The cake was a $0.99 box from Target and the frosting was the cheap Target brand “vanilla” kind. Frost your cake before you add the fondant. The piping (If you want to call THAT piping.) was made from leftover frosting I colored. I had the colors from my cookie making escapades.
Good luck!
- 16 oz cheap, mini marshmallows
- 2 lbs sifted powdered sugar
- 3 TB water
- 2 tsp light corn syrup
- paste food coloring
- vegetable shortening
- Add mini marshmallows and water to a microwave safe bowl and nuke for ~1 minute and 30 seconds. The length of time will depend on how nuclear your microwave happens to be. This is the time that worked for me.
- Continue to heat in 15 sec intervals until the entire mixture is soupy.
- Stir in the light corn syrup.
- If you're coloring the entire batch, now is the time to add the paste food coloring.
- Grease your work surface with vegetable shortening.
- Add two cups of powdered sugar to the bowl and stir until it's as mixed as you can get it.
- Dump the remaining powdered sugar onto your work surface and dump the marshmallow mixture on top.
- Grease your hands with the vegetable shortening.
- Scoop powdered sugar up on top of the marshmallow mixture and knead like you would bread.
- Keep kneading, greasing your hands as-needed, until you can pull the "dough" apart to about chest width before it breaks.
- Coat with a thin layer of shortening and double wrap in plastic wrap.
- Let the fondant rest overnight on the counter.
- Once you're ready to use the stuff, cut some off an rewrap the remaining ball.
- Nuke the cut off part for ~5 seconds.
- Dust your work surface with powdered sugar and roll out with a smooth surfaced rolling pin. Add sugar as needed to keep if from sticking.
- Cover pre-frosted cake and you've done it!
- Pat yourself on the back once you've washed the sugar from your hands.
