Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. S!

It's been kind of slow on the blog front, but for very good reason!
Two of my friends got married last week, and they were gracious and awesome enough to let me bake for it!


I, admittedly, am not skilled enough to test the waters with my own recipe creations, so I often go sifting through the internet (or blogs I'm subscribed to) to find something special.

After a few trial wedding cakes, it came down to this lineup...

The Cake:
Delicious white cake recipe I had found on Baking Bites blog. I found this recipe last year and it is the same I used for my Dad's wedding cake. I used vanilla bean rather than vanilla extract, and this time around I used coconut extract instead of the almond extract.

The Filling:
The couple's muse for the cake was a coconut cupcake from The Steeping Room. I figured the only way to incorporate coconut into the cake was through the filling. Next time I'm in Hawaii, I'll definitely have to find Chantilly Cake! I combined the recipe for Chantilly Cake Frosting with whipping cream to lighten it up for a filling.

The Buttercream:
Absolutely the only buttercream recipe I will ever use! I found this recipe for Swiss Buttercream last year for my Dad's wedding cake on Smitten Kitchen's blog. It is so delicious! My taste buds were after this buttercream after having tasted something similar on my best friend's baby shower cake. Smooth, buttery, and just sweet enough...this buttercream never fails me! This was my crumb coat on the wedding cake in this instance.

The Fondant:
I haven't experimented with fondant at all until this opportunity! It was somewhat exciting to do so, and I was even more excited to learn about Marshmallow Fondant. Having had many wedding cakes with TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE tasting fondant, this was a simply amazing discovery for me. Initially, I had used a recipe where you combine marshmallow fluff with powdered sugar and let my mixer do all the work - for the real deal I used a completely new to me recipe from What's Cooking America for Marshmallow Fondant. It was extremely easy and saved my mixer some burn up time.

Everyone loved the cake. I wish I could take credit for it, but it's due to all these wonderful people who came up with the recipes!

Baking the cake was really fun. Being cake number two, I still need to work on my timing and cake decoration skills. Which equals...naked cake!

Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. S!

OMG I MADE MMF

Yeah. So the cake story continues!

There was mention of fondant when talking with the friends. I've never made fondant in my life, and I personally have never had tasted fondant that did not need to be scraped off the cake before eating the rest of it. It was a challenge though, and why not?

And it's a good thing. Seeing the "buttercream" recipe from the Throwdown was horrible, fondant was my last chance at salvaging this cake.

I found a recipe on Allrecipes for Marshmallow Fondant. Now, I've never really thought about what Fondant is other than disgusting. (Wikipedia entry here: Fondant) But marshmallow was sure to make it better. At least in my mind.

The recipe seemed somewhat involved, but not too bad. Then I ran across the first comment of the recipe. Some brilliant woman used chilled marshmallow cream! This is what I was going to do.

Put the chilled marshmallow cream into my Pam'd mixer with paddle attachment, and poured some powdered sugar in. The mixer did all the work, and boy did it work. It started making noises and I was scared for my precious mixer! Luckily it went from powdery crumbs to solid ball of fondant. I took the fondant out of the bowl, mushed it into a ball, put it in saran wrap and froze it for about 30-40 minutes.

After being in the freezer, I littered the counter with powdered sugar and started rolling it out. (I watched some YouTube videos to figure out how to do this beforehand.)

The Big, Important Tips:
1) Roll out the fondant to be at least the diameter of your cake plus the sides.
2) Use your rolling pin to fold the fondant over and flip or roll over the cake.
3) Smooth the fondant up on the cake, not down. This will prevent ripping.

I was so happy with my first fondant attempt! It was actually tasty - but we'll see how it all tastes together with the rest of the cake.

...also, MMF = Marshmallow Fondant, if you haven't already guessed :)