Hostess Giant Orange Cupcake Birthday Cake

My mom's request for her birthday this year (earlier in November; yes, I'm behind; Happy Thanksgiving!) was for a giant Hostess Orange Cupcake cake.

I settled on a yellow cake recipe from Nick Malgieri, a vanilla pastry cream buttercream, and orange marshmallow fondant to cover the cake. This butter is for the frosting; the butter gets whipped, the pastry cream is slowly added. I liked the frosting, but at room temperature it wasn't as sturdy as a Swiss meringue buttercream, or even a regular buttercream. It did have more of the texture and taste of the vanilla filling the regular snack cakes have, though there's room for improvement.

If you don't like fondant, I urge you to try marshmallow fondant. In fact, I will pester you until you do. Not only is it incredibly simple, but so tasty that you'll want to pinch pieces off and eat it. The bad part is that I broke my hand held mixer because I continued to use it instead of using a giant wooden spoon once I realized it might be too thick. But now you know that it's possible to mix it by hand! At a certain point I began kneading the fondant and it was all really easy. I added the flavoring (orange oil) and food color (orange, obviously) after the marshmallows were melted.

Easy to roll out with a bit of confectioners' sugar to keep the fondant from sticking to the surface. I quickly realized that I should have halved the recipe; even now, a few weeks layer, half of the fondant remains.

And here we are, a giant Hostess Orange Cupcake, complete with the squiggly line across the top.

The cake was a hit, and Mom was very pleased! We decided the coating should probably be an orange white chocolate ganache next time, but none of us picked the marshmallow fondant off the cake.

Happy Birthday!