my son's 1st birthday is in just a few weeks and my hubby and i have decided to try to do his cake ourselves. this will be our first cake made with fondant. and we would like to do 2 or 3 tiers. we are expecting a lot of people at the party. so any tips or ideas for using the marshmellow fondant would be greatly appreciated! we tried to make it about a week ago and it seemed a little dry and we were unaware that you are supposed to let the buttercream icing harden a little before placing the fondant on the cake so it made it slide all over the place when we tried to smooth it out. my son's party is sesame street themed. i've looked around here on CC and gotten a few ideas. but haven't actually found how to make the fondant decorations stick to the fondant covered cake? do i just place them on the cake? or do i need to use icing to "glue" them on? does anyone know of a good tutorial on how to make the sesame street characters from fondant? either the whole character as a figure or just the faces to be put on the side? any tips, ideas, help, etc. for a beginner is much needed. please and thank you!

For the characters I would just do the faces..They are fairly simple in design and easy to do.Print a clipart off of Elmo,cookie monster etc and then cut it out and lay on fondant and cut around..Use a bit of icing to hold them onto the fondant.I find marshmellow fondant hard to work with as it reminds me of dough..Springy and hard to roll out and it doesn't keep it's shape.Even the wilton fondant is better now in taste ad texture so maybe try that instead.It also is more forgiving to rips and tears where as MFF is not.The key for me to any tiered cake is steps..meaning not trying to bake,chill,stack and decorate in one day..The cake needs time to settle and for me that means over the course of 2-3 days.Bake one day..Chill cakes overnight..Second day stack and crumbcoat..Third day cover tiers in fondant and restack.By doing this you allow the excess BC icing to sqeeze out eliminate the Bulge problem that usually occurs under fondant.When you do cover it will be nice and smooth...You want to keep the fondant to a medium thickness..meaning don't roll it out to death or it will become to thin and rip..use a rolling pin to roll it up on and then gently lay the fondat over each tier this eliminates the fondant from getting too heavy and pull down on the sides and stretch and tear.Quickly hold the fondant out like a table cloth whilel gently smoothing the sides down with hand..This also helps so you don't get ripples and folds.Once you get it all smooth you can go over it with a fondant smoother...HTH

I'll try to help a little bit but I'm new, too.

I don't like buttercream so I tried ganache. Way better. After putting it on and letting it harden or set up you brush it lightly with hot water and the fondant will stick really well.

The marshmallow fondant I have been making is coming out pretty good. If yours is too dry that means you are prob using too much sugar. I got a great tip from someone on here on how to make it. Melt the marshmallows in a bowl (add the coloring to the melted stuff before adding the sugar if you are only using one color, or make separate batches for different colors because it is WAY easier to add the color now instead of kneading it in later), and in a separate bowl put your powdered sugar. Make it so the sugar covers as much of the bottom and sides as possible and then pour the marshmallow on top of it. This way the sticky stuff never touches the bowl itself. Then sort of spoon the sugar onto the marshmallow and keep folding it in on itself. Again, the sticky stuff doesn't touch the bowl and it's SO MUCH EASIER! lol

Anywho, there are several recipes for it all over the place. Basically just equal parts marshmallow and sugar I believe with a tiny bit of water.

I think some people use clear piping gel to stick fondant to fondant. It's a pretty good "glue".

thanks for the help and advice. when we did our trial run with the fondant, we wanted to make it red, but it ended up turning pink? how can we get a true red color in the fondant. and if we purchased the white wilton fondant, how would we color it?

Use AmeriColor or Cake Craft super colors they work best.

For a good red you could buy the red satin ice fondant. It tastes much better than wilton. Is there a reason you want to do fondant? I did a 3 tier sesame street cake with just the faces and used buttercream with fondant accents. The bottom was cookie monster and I placed small cookies below his face, the second layer was big bird and his feathers were fondant but I used a leave cutter for the shape and just pused them into the fresh icing. The top was Elmo and then I had a fondant sign on top with my grandsons name and covered a real candle in fondant to look like a fake candle. The smash cake was a 4 inch Elmo with bc icing too. I thought I had my pic in my photos but must not have loaded it. There are several though out on th boards like this. Unless you use a good tasting fondant it is almost a waste of time and money because people peel it off . Choco pan is a good chocolate fondant but a bit pricey. I would just do bc ...tastes good, looks good and no one peels it off. jmo
Teri