"Grow Up" Mario Birthday Cake

Based on "Grow Up" Mario Birthday Cake by Melinda H.
I made this cake for my boyfriend's birthday - he loves Super Mario! And since the red mushroom makes the little Mario bigger, I thought this was the ideal motive for a cake! I
t's not exactly a version of Melinda's super awesome cake, I made many changes, because I never made fondant before and wanted something smaller and easier. I thought I'd post this as a version anyway, I hope that is okay for Melinda.
So I used marzipan instead of the fondant. I used red food color to make it red, and kept the rest in its natural color. The points on the mushroom are covered with icing sugar because the marzipan was not white enough. I used pieces of licorice for the eyes. The coins around the cake are supposed to be the coins Mario has to collect in the game.
As a base I made a vanilla-chocolate marbeled cake.
If anyone of you is going to make this, here a few tips:
The Marzipan is not as easy to work with as I thought, the edges are not as accurate as you could probably achieve with fondant - altough I don't know that from my own experience.
brush your choice of jam or preserves onto the cake before you put the layer of marzipan on, it will stick better.