An attempt at making fondant..

I had been meaning to try making fondant for quite some time now, but due to a moody oven, and different websites telling me fondant doesn't taste good I had kept putting it off for quite some time.
However, a couple of weeks back I finally picked up a bag of marshmallows, and decided to give it a try...

To cut the taste of the fondant, I decided to make a slightly bitter cake, by adapting my "Tiramisu cupcake" recipe that was featured on "Savour the senses" here

However, in this recipe Ive added a bit of Cocoa.
(Note: I don't remember all the recipes exactly, I just generally dump stuff and end up forgetting exact measures. The following recipes are an approximation)




The Chocolate cake

• 100 g butter
• 100 g powdered sugar
• 100 g all-purpose flour
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tbsp instant coffee
• 3 tbsp cocoa
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 2-3 tbsp milk

1. Preheat the oven to 350F (175C) whip the butter and sugar together.
2. Add the eggs and vanilla and whip until the mixture is light.
3. Add the instant coffee and mix. 
4. Mix the flour,cocoa and baking powder (dry ingredients) in a bowl.
5. Now, slowly incorporate the dry ingredients and the milk with the butter mixture.
6. Bake at 350F until a skewer comes out clean (about 30 minutes).

 The butter cream frosting: 
Make a simple vanilla buttercream frosting. I whipped 2 tbsp butter with half a cup of heavy cream, half a cup of icing sugar and a tsp of vanilla, to make just enough to completely cover the cake.

The fondant:
Nuke 1.5 cups of marshmallows(I know it's a strange measure, but I dont remember thwe weight of the pack I used), with a tbsp of water for a minute or two, keep checking and stirring. Once completely melted, start adding icing sugar and stirring until it starts becoming thicker.
I cheated a bit, and instead of only Icing sugar, I also added cornflour, 'coz I started getting paranoid about the amount of sugar I was adding.
As it got thicker, I coated my hands with clarified butter(Ghee...you can use any shortening I guess), and started kneading it into a shiny dough. At this point I cheated again, and instead of all ghee, I added a tablespoon of olive oil(what do I say, I try to eat healthy)...
Keep kneading until a smooth dough is formed, wrap it tight in film and freeze it for atleast half an hour.

The assembly:
Cover the cooled cake with buttercream frosting.
Roll out the fondant on a surface dusted with icing sugar. You can add any color to this(I added a rose red).
Fondant is a very forgiving and versatile frosting, so you can play around with it quite a bit, until you get the hang of it.
Lightly roll the rolled out fondant on the rolling pin and in the same motion roll it out across the cake. Smooth it and trim the edges.

I added fondant flowers.