Hi,
I was asking about mm fondant the other day, as I was planning to make the Dora cake from the 2006 Wilton Yearbook. I received some great tips.

Now I am actually making the fondant for the Fairy Dora cake for my little granddaughter's birthday party, which is tomorrow. The cake is coming along just fine...Dora is all decorated and waiting for her dress, the mm fondant. SO................I melted the marshmallows with the 2 T of water and the 2 tsp of vanilla.........everything was going good...then I poured it into the powdered sugar and that's when things went awry.
It is now half mm and half unmixed powdered sugar. It is very dry. I put it back into the microwave to warm it up and soften it, but it is still not soft and not very mix-able. Help! Is that stuff salvagable or should I go with another batch? Can anyone possibly tell me what I might have done wrong? Thanks so much for any suggestions.

Linda in NC

I add the powdered sugar in a little bit at a time and use a Kitchen Aid mixer to blend it. You will have to knead in the last bit of sugar though since it starts getting tough to blend.

Try taking it away from the extra sugar and hand kneading it a while, heat a little, hand knead a little. See how much you are able to work with it, but until it gets back to a somewhat smooth texture, don't add any more sugar than to coat your kneading surface.

I'm never able to actually mix in all of the sugar. I've usee my mixer to mix it initially and then hand kneaded it to finish. I've also mixed it by having a bowl with about 1/2 my sugar with a well in the middle and then slowly pour the melted mm into it, mixing it up a little and then once it formed into somewhat of a ball I dumped it out onto a well powder-sugar covered counter to knead in additional powder sugar until it is no longer sticky. I always finish it out by hand kneading it on the counter. I find that sometimes it can get grainy from too much sugar.

I don't "get to" use all the powdered sugar either. I just mix it and knead it together by hand. It really doesn't work well even with the dough hook in the K.A. as far as I'm concerned. Just watch those fingertips with the hot MM.

I taste the fondant every now and then to make sure it's still edible to me, as I HATE regular fondant, so if the MMF tastes good to me, it should to everyone else in my family or whomever I make it for.

I mix the first half of the melted marshmallows and sugar with a wooden spoon and then the rest of the sugar, I knead in by hand.

this is the tricky stage, but don't despair, it is always like that..
Use your hands (spary hands w/ pam) and keep kneading... add a little bit of water as you knead, maybe a teaspoon at a time until the consistency changes..this would take place for a good 10 minutes or more.. don't worry it will come together... note: you need to add all of the sugar. because you would need it.

Well It's after 10pm and I finally finished with the Dora birthday cake and my first experience with fondant. Basically, it took me the whole day to decorate that cake. Does it take any of the rest of you a long time to decorate a cake? And I baked the cake yesterday!

Thanks for all your suggestions for how to deal with my over-dry mm fondant. I decided that it would be easier to start fresh......I dumped that whole batch and made another, this time adding in the sugar little by little, as advised. It went much better. I ended up with a nice ball of marshmallow fondant, which I found easy to roll out and cut and shape.

The upper part of Dora's fondant dress looks great, but I am not very happy with the fondant skirt. The "fabric" of the skirt does not look very smooth.....then when I added the colorful bands around the bottom of the skirt it tended to separate where it was supposed to be connected, and tear a bit. I could not make it look right, so I added some little buttercream stars and a couple of bows to cover some of that up. I'd give the picture of the cake in the Wilton yearbook a 10, and I'd give my copy of that cake about a 6. sigh.

But the real test will be when my little granddaughter sees it. I'm hoping for a big, big smile.

Thanks again for the great suggestions and advice!

Linda in NC

I had the same problem with my mmf, when I first tried making it.
After reading the replies I feel confident enough to try mmf again.
Thank-you to all for the info.

I didn't have much luck the first time I made it either. I've made it a couple times since because the kids like it and it's worked out well. I only use a little more than 1/2 of the amount of pwd sugar. I won't try chocolate mmf again though. It did not work at all for me. Luckily Satin Fine Foods send me an emergency bucket of dark chocolate Satin Ice to save the day!

Debbie