monday monday morning

Well, it's less than two weeks 'til the bar exam, so things are getting pretty intense here... 

We had a pretty nice weekend, though. We had a little birthday celebration for Nick's coworker Carol, and I took Saturday afternoon off to bake the cake. It turned out alright! And we had such a relaxing, fun little party - not a lot of people, but a lot of conversation and friendliness. Nice, nice!

Now I must tell about the cake: I have been itching for a year or more to attempt something called "marshmallow fondant," and this was my first chance to try it. You melt a bag of marshmallows, color it and mix it with powdered sugar until it is stiff like dough.  You can use it like fondant to decorate your cake/cookies/whatever. Here's a tutorial:

http://cakecentral.com/articles/105/mmf-how-to-decorate-cake-marshmallow-fondant

Though I think the tutorial overcomplicates it a little - you don't need a mixer, and I didn't use any water or flavoring. Just melted marshmallows + powdered sugar + coloring. 

I couldn't obtain food coloring, so I used cocoa powder to color the fondant chocolate brown, and then dusted it with more cocoa powder. The cake itself was chocolate flavored with a little triple sec (because I couldn't find vanilla at the friend's house where I was baking!) and the buttercream frosting was also flavored with triple sec. You need to have the buttercream layer in there, because fondant won't stick to cake. The buttercream acts like cement, and it also covers the cracks and flaws in the cake surface so that the fondant looks smooth and pretty. 

But the marshmallow fondant was a lot of fun to make and use. You should try it! 

Oh dear - the sky outside just turned black. We're in for a rainstorm, I think. Maybe it's time to pour some coffee, light some candles (for the ambience), and think about the bar...