Bunny Birthday Cake

Yesterday was my husband's birthday and I considered that a chance to make and decorate a cake. I should have prepared the decorations a few days in advance so that they had the chance to harden, but the inner lazy procrastinating me just kept saying that I would be able to do everything in one day. Well, yes, I was able to - but with difficulty. I made my own marshmallow fondant myself - but after a year of not doing anything with fondant, I forgot that when you don't sift the powdered sugar, you would have difficulty getting a smooth fondant texture. So if you want to make marshmallow fondant yourself, please don't forget to sift the powdered sugar like me, or in the end you would get some lumps of sugar in the fondant dough. You could try reducing the lumps by kneading it over and over again, but believe me... You would get a cramp in the end, so it's much better to sift the sugar and avoid being lazy like me...!

It's also much better to prepare the fondant figurines a few days in advance, especially if your figurines need to 'stand up', like my two bunnies. If you don't do so, your figurines would have trouble standing upright without support - It's also the reason why I put some chocolate balls behind the bunnies - because I didn't want the bunnies to fall...;). Well, another alternative is to use gum sugar paste, which has a harder consistency than normal fondant, and it also dries up quicker. Personally I prefer gum paste for making small figurines, because it's just easier to handle than fondant, but I didn't have any gum paste stock, so I had to make do with my homemade fondant. I feel that the birthday cake I made last year looks much better, it just looks more professional than the one I made two days ago. I suppose it's because I used gum paste last year and I was also more prepared - or maybe as I age my stock of ideas is simply getting lower...;-)??

The piggy birthday cake from last year. The oink is modelled from 'Ringel' (in German) or 'Piggley' (in English), a character from 'Au Schwarte' or 'Jakers' - a children's television series that my husband really likes :).

The bunny birthday cake from yesterday. This year the birthday cake doesn't have a real theme. I just made two white bunnies, because now we've got two little lovely bunnies as house pets, even though ours are brown - I was too lazy to knead the fondant brown...

Marshmallow Fondant (MMF)
Ingredients

• 500 gr marshmallow
• 750 gr powdered sugar
• 4 tbs water
• shortening
• Corn starch (for dusting)
  

Please look at this video on YouTube, if you're interested to make marshmallow fondant yourself. It's quite clear and due to this video I was able to make MMF myself.

We both don't like fondant, we find it too sweet - but if you have a real sweet tooth, marshmallow fondant might be a better alternative than the normal fondant made from glucose (and other strange ingredients) - it tastes better. To me fondant is purely for decoration though, so this is what happened to the bunnies after the cake was cut :).

Update:)
My bunnies