I am very new to cake decorating and made my first MMF fondant a week ago, colored it orange for an orange flavored cake and it turned out quite beautiful. I was SO impressed and proud of myself.

Then last night I attempted chocolate MMF fondant. I did it exactly the same using the large batch recipe with mini marshmellows but I added 4-5 oz of melted good Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate.

The chocolate fondant was "wet", but not sticky, and cracky at the same time. It was very shiny, compared to the plain MMF which I believe was the oil from the chocolate. Then it cracks every possibly chance it got. Really was maddening. I tried and tried to get it on the cake and finally managed to put it on in one peice but had cracks throughout.

So I guess you can't add too much chocolate. The recipe said 1 oz for the small batch. I doubled my chocolate because I wanted it darker and very chocolaty.

Here's a picture. Ignore the decorating...... I was experimenting with gold luster dust painting and different techniques, it's sorta of a trial cake.

Well, I can't really see any cracks so you must have camo'd them very well!! It looks very good! I hope next time it works better for you!

Hi ...

I can't see any cracks or flaws in your fondant!

I can't find the recipe here on the site ... but maybe, like you said, it was because there was too much in your mix? I vaguely remember something about using cocoa rather than actual chocolate, but i could be thinking of something else. I'll keep searching my notes and see if I can find it ...

but i think that your decorations on the cake look great! Love the gold color!

For the record, IT TASTED ABSOLUTELY AWESOME!

I just had a peice and it was out of this world. It completely "melted" into the buttercream and was FABULOUS even if it didn't look perfect.

I like your cake! It looks very nice! What color did you use to get the leaves gold?

It's the luster dust in "yellow gold"

I also bought the "old gold" and like it, it's darker, more antique looking but I haven't tried it yet.

I used probably 1/4 to 1/3 of the container to do this cake and it was $3.99 for the small container. So, it's pricey but gives you a perfectly metallic looking gold.

So TickledPink, when you ate some of your cake did you eat the leaves too? I bought some luster dust last weekend and I haven't used it yet, but it says that it's not edible. I wanted to know if it was just the brand I purchased!

Mine said it was edible and I bought it in a cake supply shop, so yes we ate everything. I used a bit of vodka and lemon extract, a couple drops of each actually to make it into "paint" and I can't say that anything tasted differently.

The chocolate MMF fondant tasted delicious, next time I'm just going to cut back on the amount of chocolate I use.

Good cake! I think the luster dust just got it's non-food label. I had wondered how something so sparkly could be food. It's not. It's non-toxic but is made with the same things they use to color paint and plastic.