I want to start off by saying I love this site! I cant get enough of all your beautiful cakes and suggestions!

I am new to cake decorating (I just completed course 2) and am making a two tiered bridal shower cake as the trial for the brides wedding cake. I was going to do a buttercream cake but I love the look of the MMF cakes and was considering trying it. I have never used MMF or fondant before and am a little scared. I have a few questions that I could not find answers for in previous forum discussions:

How far in advance can I cover and decorate the cake with the MMF? Can I cover it the day before and it will still be good for the following day or does it have to be done the day it is served?

How hard is it for a newbie to use? It seems from the posts it is pretty easy, but you guys all do beautiful cakes and are amazing decorators.

The design I like has ribbon on the bottom of the MMF, is this normal fabric ribbon? How do you attach it?

Any other suggestions will be greatly appreciated .

Thank so much for reading and thank you in advance for any responses.

Stephanie

"How far in advance can I cover and decorate the cake with the MMF? Can I cover it the day before and it will still be good for the following day or does it have to be done the day it is served?" I always complete my cakes the day before they are due to allow for mishaps that may need fixing. I've made several MMF covered cakes and everyone tells me that the cakes were moist and even 1 week later they were still eating leftovers. The only drawback I see is that you are not supposed to leave out a cake with a perishable filling so no pudding fillings, which everyone seems to love.


"How hard is it for a newbie to use?" Actually quite simple to use...I think it is easier to handle than Wilton's fondant. And you don't have to worry about getting your icing smooth since the MMF covers it up.

"The design I like has ribbon on the bottom of the MMF, is this normal fabric ribbon? How do you attach it?" I've never used ribbon myself on MMF but I have on BC and I think the application would not be too difficult. I would just wrap it around snug and attach in the back with royal icing. Maybe somebody who's done it before can give you more advice.

Hope this helps.

Thank you so much for the advice Chris J. I will give it a try the day before the shower, that way I can always fall back on buttercream if it doesn't work.

I will hopefully have my first picture to post when it is done.

I just wanted to say GOOD LUCK. I will be attempting to do my first covered mmf cake this coming week too. Can't wait to see your pics!

Thanks redhare and good luck to you too! Your cakes are beautiful so you have little to worry about

I can't believe how stressed I am and the cake is only for my sister-in-law!

I strongly suggest you make fondant and test the application well before the cake is due. It can be tricky to get the lower edges smooth, so it does take practice in applying the fondant. Squares are easier.

You can practice on a styrofoam dummy, or other similarly round item. You want something that is straight on the bottom edge. For example, a cake pan has a lip on the rim. When you invert it, the rim will be in the way of smoothing the lower edge.

Good luck.

Hey there! I've been playing around with MMF the past couple of weeks and I'm using it on my very first wedding cake this weekend! I hope the look will be as smooth as regular fondant - the practice ones I did looked good but of course something will go wrong when I do the "big kahuna" cake!
Don't let making it intimidate you - start with a "mini recipe." I'm not sure if you're on Wilton's discussion forum as well, but if you search under the forum called "recipes" for the author "bunnywoman" (on the Wilton website's discussion forum), she has a whole thread with the recipe for small and large batches and tips for success. It's great! I started off with her small recipe so I could get the feeling for working with it. It's one cup marshmallows and...well, I forget the rest so I'd have to look it up cuz I've been making big batches this past week. The big recipe that uses 16oz bag of marshmallows takes more time but it's worth it. It's so great to be able to practice with inexpensive MMF as opposed to the expensive store bought kind, and I think it's the same consistency and everything. And it tastes SOOO much better than Wilton's fondant. I don't know why they can't put some flavoring or something in it - I've never met one person who will actually eat it. It's pretty nasty!
anyway, let me know if you have any questions!

Melissa

Thank you Melissa. I just went to the Wilton site and found the very lengthy forum on MMF and the small batch recipe is amazing! Here is the link if anyone is interested:
http://www.wilton.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=77236&FTVAR_MSGDBTABLE=


Thanks JoAnn B for the advice and suggestion of practicing on something. Perhaps for this cake I will stick to buttercream and play with a small batch of MMF for the accents.

Thanks again.

Yes, it most certainly is lengthy! But there's some really good advice in it. One day I went through and cut and pasted the important things onto a single Word document, so I have it as a point of reference. It took a while to get through everything, but there was no way I was going to read through how ever many thousands of pages it's up to now. One thing I learned, and I don't think she mentions it in her recipe - make sure you put a light coating of Crisco on everything - the bowl you'll be melting the marshmallows in, the mat or counter where you'll be kneading it with, the spoon you'll stir it with, and if you use the mixer (which I do for the big batch), grease the paddle and that bowl as well. It takes an extra minute or so but it really helps. And I found that using powdered sugar to roll it out on dried it out - cornstarch works much better with MMF (since marshmallows are already covered in cornstarch - I guess that's why!) than sugar. Now just a couple other bits of info - with the small batch, I can knead it about 75% with a spoon, then I take it out and finish the rest by hand (don't forget to keep your hands Crisco'd). It doesn't take very long since it's a small batch. Now with the large batch - I tried kneading the whole thing by hand and it took FOR-EVER! So now I knead it with a spoon - again about 50% - then throw it in the Kitchen Aid for a minute or so. Your poor Kitchen Aid will be struggling - it's a pretty heavy mixture - but it will get the majority of the mixing done for you. If you just throw it all in the KA before kneading it with a spoon first, I found that it didn't incorporate the sugar as well and left a whole bunch of it at the bottom of the bowl. By doing some kneading yourself with the spoon - you can concentrate on getting as much as you can somewhat incorporated into the marshmallow part before putting it in the mixer. It will look at first like it will never come together but it will. And I find I have to add at least an extra tablespoon of water to the big batch after it starts mixing. Then, once it somewhat resembles fondant (it won't be smooth - it will look pretty rough), I take it out and finish kneading by hand on a surface lightly covered with Crisco. I find I have to do it in three different parts since it's too much for me to hold all at once.
Also - some people use a dough hook instead of the paddle but for some reason that didn't work for me - but try it and see - maybe I'm doing something wrong by using the paddle - but it just seems to accomplish the task faster. The dough hook tends to get stuck in a whole big blob of the mixture and doesn't mix anything else up in the bowl.
Oh - and one of the coolest things about MMF is that you can color a whole batch at once! No more having to knead it all in! For the cake I'm doing this weekend - it's covered in ivory fondant so every time I made a batch - while it was still the soupy mixture - I add a drop of ivory and it made the whole batch a gorgeous shade of ivory. Just keep stirring till it's all even and voila! I had to do it with black last night (for the groom's cake) and boy did it take a lot of the bottle but I kept thinking how much worse it would be if I was trying to knead in all that color by hand. Next time I'll try making chocolate MMF and dying it black from there.
Oh - and add your flavorings AFTER it comes out of the microwave. I found if I did it before - something weird happened to it and the extract became clumpy! Strange, I know, but I solved that problem by adding in the extracts after it comes out of the microwave.

Whew - sorry to deluge you with info - just trying to save you some time from my own trial and error!

Have fun!

I only started decorating a month ago and attended only two weeks of wilton's course 1. Even with my minimal experience with cake decorating, I have not found MMF to be intimedating at all (except for the first time I made a big batch and didn't melt the marshmellows enough and was afraid that the motor on my KA would poop-out My boyfriend said he never knew baking was so involved and almost dangerous ). I made it for a second time two nights ago and it went so much easier putting the mix back in the microwave for 30 seconds after adding some of the powdered sugar, neading it, then popping it back in the microwave. I did this untill it was kneaded properly and it went by quickly without any stress.

I have tasted fondant at many weddings and as a former wedding coordinator, I have heard all the complaints about how fondant looks pretty and tastes horrible (sometimes the brides blamed the baker for the fondant's taste and didn't understand that it is a normal occurrance with most fondant). When I decided I was going to decorate cakes, I was going to find an alternative - MMF is it! I love how cost effective it is, easy to make, and that it can occupy my boyfriends 2 year old son who loves seeing me mold things out of it (it's so cute, whenever I take the MMF out, I feel like one of those clowns that make balloon animals, taking his requests for anything that comes to his mind and molding it.)

Just like JoAnne B said, the trick is to get it smooth at the bottom edge, and I found this difficult at first, but am getting a little better each time - I just have been covering the bottom edge of my practice with a MMF ribbon.

Try it as soon as you can and practice, practice, practice and I'm sure that you will have a beautiful cake for the event. Best of Luck

Wow -great idea about putting it back in the microwave after adding some sugar and heating it up some more - I never thought of that! I'll have to try that ! Thanks so much!

Yes, baking is one the world's most dangerous occupations. For people with sweet tooths (like me!), that is! I've been doing Weight Watchers since August and I was doing really well - lost almost 20 pounds - and then I started doing cakes again - and I've actually gained 5 pounds back over the past couple of months! I'm so bummed cuz I'm usually very careful, but I guess all that taste testing and eating cake scraps added up. Darn it all! But I enjoy doing cakes, so like I said, it's just one of the hazards of the business!

Great idea to stir in the coloring while the mixture is still soupy!!!! Thanks!!!

let me ask this stupid question.... MMF stands for??? all i know is it's made of marshmallows, flavoring, powedered sugar,etc.. Is this simillar to marzipan? How do you differentiate MMF from chocolate paste? Sorry new to cake decorating, just learned from reading food magazines and in this site.

Hey there! No problem - I didn't know what it was when I first got onto the message boards either! It stands for Marshmallow Fondant. It's just a pain to keep writing it out so everyone just writes MMF. We're lazy and want to save our hand strength for our piping bags instead of writing out marshmallow fondant every time. Ha ha.

I can't thank you guys enough for all of your tips and words of encouragement! I am going to make a small batch tomorrow morning and see how it goes

I will hopefully be posting wonderful results tomorrow after I try it!

Thanks again ...you guys are great!