My friend and I made our first ever fondant cake. Not only had we never made a fondant cake, we had never made a cake or any of it's fixins from scratch! Today we made a red velvet cake from scratch, buttercream icing from scratch, and rolled buttercream fondant from scratch!!! The cake turned out wonderful!! Tasted and looked soooo good! The icing turned out amazing! It ended up having a whipped taste to it-not too sweet. But the fondant....well that was another story. It tasted good, however, after we put the food dye in the fondant to give it a blue color, we proceeded to roll out the fondant with the roller. The fondant started cracking and when we put it on the cake, it tore in many places. We were able to cover most of the tears up with little fishies that we made from more fondant. Does anyone know how to prevent the fondant from tearing or know what we did wrong? Would homemade marshmellow fondant work better than the homemade rolled buttercream fondant? Please let me know!

Anything will work better than rolled buttercream. It's good for cookies, but not as good for cakes. Because well, you know, it breaks easily when its in large pieces.

Plus I think it tastes like greasy fondant. blargh

You will only find out what works best for you by experimenting. What works for me might not work for you. If you read more threads about fondants you will see that many people have problems with each type.

I'm hardly as expert as others here, but I've tried rolled buttercream, marshmallow fondant (MMF) and Michele Foster fondant (MFF) - and either of the fondants works better than the rolled buttercream on cake. I like MMF but hate the sticky melted marshmallows. Have had pretty good luck with MFF - it is a little more complicated to make but not much. The big advantage to MFF (IMHO) is that you can knead in more shortening or more glycerin if it is too dry and cracking, or you can knead in more powdered sugar if it is too sticky.

The commercial fondants are significantly easier to handle for me (I have used some Fondarific) but can't get them locally, and can't justify the cost for hobby baking only - so I'm sticking with MFF right now. The recipe is here on CC.

I have never tried rolled buttercream. But I agree, MMF is great to work with. Satin Ice and others are too but cant justify the cost. LUV Rhondas ultimate MMF (in recipes) as it doesnt taste as sickeningly sweet as the others.