I have a question about using this on fruit cake. The cake i'm making is caribbean fruit cake which is soaked with rum. I tried this before for my wedding cake and encountered a disaster where the marzipan was oozing from the cake and through the fondant i had put on top of it. Is there any reason that would cause almond paste to melt? The cake was baked days in advance so it wasn't warm..any advice would be appreciated

Almond paste and marzipan are not the same thing. Which did you use previously?

I used almond paste, it was a deep yellowish color

OK then. You want to use Marzipan. Take the almond paste and knead in powdered sugar until it's almost the consistency of fondant. Then use that.

Really"! so maybe why it looked like it melted, does the icing sugar make it softer, because the almond paste was really difficult to knead.
thanks for the advice too

I like to use homemade almond paste as opposed to bought marzipan.

A good way to gauge the quality of bought marzipan is to go for the paler coloured ones. The more yellow coloured ones are of poorer quality than the paler ones.

I always allow the almond paste to dry out on the cake for a couple of days to a full week before covering with mmf or ri as the oils from the almonds can wreck havoc on the ri or fondant.

Homemade almond paste is best used straight away in my experience as it can start to dry out quickly which makes rolling out at a later date more difficult. You can't really zap it in the microwave like you would fondant as it just makes the oils from the almonds flow out even more!

Don't forget to seal the cake with some apricot jam or something first before you apply the almond paste, helps it stick better also.