Hi, I'm new to cake decorating and am going to be making a monkey cake for my nephews birthday party. I tried making a batch of mm fondant. The fondant came out great, great consistency, but when I rolled it out, even with confectioners sugar on the counter it still stuck terribly and got ruined!!! Any tips? Also I'm concerned about buttercream and frostings/fills with dairy in them because I know you are not supposed to refrigerate mm fondant therefore I am wondering how you can leave cakes out when a lot of recipes have dairy in the recipes. And finally, last question.... I know MM fondant stays a little softer than other fondants, I wanted to make some shapes out of it and possibly 3D modeling, should I just use modeling chocolate to do this instead? Any advice would be amazing!!! Thank you in advance.

I only use mm fondant, I usually make it a day or 2 before I need it and put it in a put it in a ziploc bag with a little extra confectioner's sugar. I always roll it out with some confectioner's sugar and cornstarch, especially if my kitchen is war.

As for the putting in the fridge, I do it all the time. I will not leave a dairy filled cake out.

For shapes and 3d modeling, I do not recommend mm fondant, it has never held up in my attempts, I will use gum paste or store bought fondant. If I am doing flowers or using molds I use mm fondant.

astokes2, this is a great blog:

http://sugarsweetcakesandtreats.blogspot.com/

Angela (AngelFood4 here at CC) only uses MMF. There are very detailed instructions in her blog.

Lately she's also started using modeling chocolate, which you can mix with fondant to make figures. But you can also add tylose to MMF to make the figures.

Here are the other links:

http://sugarsweetcakesandtreats.blogspot.com/2010/09/recipe-marshmallow-fondant-mmf.html

http://sugarsweetcakesandtreats.blogspot.com/2010/11/recipe-red-marshmallow-fondant-mmf.html

http://sugarsweetcakesandtreats.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-to-make-modeling-chocolate.html

When rolling out on powder sugar you have to keep picking the fondant up and dusting under it or it will stick, because it does absorb the powder sugar as you are rolling it out. The middle section is especially bad about it.

As far as the dairy, it depends on the recipe. Buttercreams make with milk are usually safe to leave out because of the amount of sugar in them.

You can add gum tex, tylose, or cmc to your fondant to stiff it up some.