My grandson’s first birthday is coming up so my daughter and I decided we wanted to play around with a cake and fondant to see how things turn out.   We had so much fun even though it took us two days to get it all done!

Review Time: Sun Flour Mills is our absolute favorite mix for chocolate cake. We also love their other mixes but for this post we used the chocolate cake and will be using it again on the 2 tier cake being made for the birthday party.  They are not available everywhere but you can buy them directly from their website or find them on Azure Standard, which is how I got my mixes to Alaska.

Next: The Fondant for the cake.  This is what we wanted to play with most.  We knew the cake would turn out but we wanted to see if the fondant would hold up for a day or two and to play with making all the sea creatures.

It was easy to prepare our own marshmallow fondant and fairly easy to work with. 1 batch made enough for the entire cake plus fun animals and munching on. 

If you want to make your own here is a great recipe:

8 ounces of mini marshmallows
1 pound of powdered sugar + extra for dusting and kneading
2 tbsp water
food coloring

Step 1: Place marshmallows in a bowl with the water and put into microwave on high for about 1 minute until they are fluffy.   

Step 2: Stir the marshmallows with a silicone spatula until smooth and all marshmallows are mostly melted.   Microwave again for about 30 seconds if the lumps are not all gone.  

Step 3: Add the powdered sugar and mix until it becomes to hard to stir.  Place on a powdered sugar dusted counter and knead it until it is smooth and not sticky. Add more powdered sugar if you need to but be careful to not add too much or the fondant will get too stiff. 

IMPORTANT: To color the fondant you have three choices, add it during step 2 to make all the fondant one color, mix it in by hand to the completed fondant if you need more than one color (this will color your hands), or paint it with dye (you can add clear extract to thin out gel dyes). We decided to paint our animals and that worked fairly well, just be sure to let them dry before you move them!

We were making water so we made a marble looking fondant for our cake cover.

NOW THE FUN!!!

After doing a buttercream crumb layer on the cake we put on the fondant and got to work making it look awesome.

first the seaweed

then the sea creatures,coral, bubbles, starfish and sand.

Then we turned it into an amazing looking cake.  photos show all the way around the cake.

This was amazingly fun and now we get to eat it!