How to make fondant with marshmallows

What is fondant? You've seen it countless times in the patisseriess covering the cakes to give them a professional touch or even used to make figures. It can be done in many ways but this recipe that I will give you right now is the simplest of all. To get  fondant we will use marshmallows to give enough elasticity to the sugar in order to easily cover the whole pie.

INGREDIENTS (for a small cake):

12.5 ounces of  marshmallows
25 ounces of icing sugar

You can make any amount of fondant just taking care  the weight of sugar is twice the weight in marshmallows.

First we will melt the marshmallows. We put marshmallows in a greased bowl - use a bit of butter - , add a tablespoon of water and give it about 3 minutes maximun power at the microwave. 

Very important : marshmallows sometimes come with a pink strip that contains strawberry flavor. If you want a strawberry flavored fondant you leave it. Otherwise remove the pink strip or buy marshmallows with neutral flavor (all white).

We took the bowl from the microwave oven and we start adding powdered sugar slowly kneading with our hands that you also should cover with sugar to keep us from sticking. When the dough has some consistency remove from the bowl and place it on a dry surface covered with sugar and continue kneading until it becomes a smooth, elastic and compact dough.

The next step is to place  the dough in plastic wrap and then leave it in the fridge for 24 hours.

The next day  let it take the room temperature, and once again knead it. Using a wide knife or similar tool use this dough to "paint" the pie.

Obviously the resulting cake will be "white" and may not be to your liking. If you want you can use chocolate powder - around 6 ounces - which weight is subtracted from the sugar. That is, in this case marshmallows weight will be 12.5 ounces and suger will be reduced to 19 ounces. The chocolate is added to the melted marshmallows and from there all the same.

For other flavors, try to use natural products like strawberry syrup. Do not worry if you can not obtain the incredible colors of the patisserie : you may know those colors are achieved with food colorants and may not be as healthy as natural colors.

The result is spectacular and worthy of being in any window of a patisserie. With a little skill and patience you can make real works of art, to eat the cake with the eyes rather than with the mouth.