Cake Decorating Community - Cakes We Bake

Hullo all - I have been asked to recreate a similar looking cake for a bride who will be getting married some 130km from home on a game ranch that has quite a rough road.  I am unable to deliver and set up the cake, but thought that I could perhaps get the same messy look by covering the sponge cakes in fondant and then doing the messy looking technique on top of it with royal icing, that way I can be sure that she can safely set each tier on top of the next at the venue without worrying about the buttercream being messed up.  Does anybody have a better idea?  I am sending a picture of the cake - all suggestions from the professionals welcomed :-)

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I'm not a pro Mandy, but I'm with you on the royal icing idea.  Way more stable than butter cream.  Although, with this kind of finish, butter cream would be fairly easily repairable even for a non baker?

Yes I know Katy, but with just buttercream the cake is not as "stable" as one covered in fondant don't you think?  I am most concerned about the cake slipping and sliding because it doesn't have a firm something to keep it all together - does that make sense?

Yes, it makes perfect sense and I see exactly where you're coming from.  I would definitely go for the fondant base, whatever you put on top of it.  Kinda holds it all together huh?

Well that was what I thought.  There is no other way I can think of to make this cake be firm, unless I were to undercoat it with chocolate ganache and then buttercream over that, but the thought of any melting because of whatever reason makes me quiver in my icing boots!  And to my way of thinking, royal icing over fondant will surely be a better long lasting solution.  But whatever happens, I will do a dummy cake at home and cover it with fondant and royal icing and see how it stands the test of some time as well as how does it taste.  Will keep you posted :-)

Sounds like a plan to me - no way would I risk ganache!  Melting goo all over the show, ugh! And yes, royal icing will last much much longer than the buttercream.  Go for it.

:-)

I have no idea how far 130 km is... but I delivered a cake out to a ranch covered in buttercream icing and fondant in 100 degree heat a couple summers ago.  I was on dirt roads that were bumpy for over an hour.  Even ran into a cattle drive!  Had cows on all 4 sides of my car for about a mile!  Was quite a hoot!  Anyway the cake arrived fine.  I had an egg crate style pad under the cake to absorb the bumps.  However... I did assemble the tiers on site.  Did not take it tiered up. 

I am wondering.... Royal icing to coat a cake?  I have never heard of that.  I would think the royal would crack on a bumpy road.  I am not much of a Royal Icing fan other than for detail work. 

I do cakes and deliver them to ranches all the time and always use either buttercream or ganache... crank up the air conditioning in the car and go for it.   Just keep them out of the direct sunlight and the air cool and it should be fine. 

Just my 2 cents worth!

Thank you Jeri C - am so happy to hear your response.  In my search to find out as much as I can about cakes I stumbled across a British cake artist "David Cakes" and he does some seriously good (as well as outlandish) stuff - and he seems to work solely with royal icing.  I personally have never covered a cake (over fondant) with the stuff but am going to give it a trial run and see what happens.  Thank you again :-)

jeri c said:

I have no idea how far 130 km is... but I delivered a cake out to a ranch covered in buttercream icing and fondant in 100 degree heat a couple summers ago.  I was on dirt roads that were bumpy for over an hour.  Even ran into a cattle drive!  Had cows on all 4 sides of my car for about a mile!  Was quite a hoot!  Anyway the cake arrived fine.  I had an egg crate style pad under the cake to absorb the bumps.  However... I did assemble the tiers on site.  Did not take it tiered up. 

I am wondering.... Royal icing to coat a cake?  I have never heard of that.  I would think the royal would crack on a bumpy road.  I am not much of a Royal Icing fan other than for detail work. 

I do cakes and deliver them to ranches all the time and always use either buttercream or ganache... crank up the air conditioning in the car and go for it.   Just keep them out of the direct sunlight and the air cool and it should be fine. 

Just my 2 cents worth!

Mandy, one thing does occur to me (I think it was Jeri's mention of the royal cracking).  I would suggest you make sure to add some glycerin to your royal to keep it a little softer.  Otherwise you will have a cake covered in 'cement', which will be impossible to eat.  That would have to come off before the cake could be cut and would spoil the effect as I suspect a lot of the fondant would come off with it.

oh thank you Katy for that - any and all advice so gratefully accepted xox

Katy... that is what I was talking about.  I only use Royal for decorations.  I have seen David Cakes tutorials and youtube videos... he is amazing... but I always want the cake to be edible too.  I just can not imagine cutting into a cake totally iced in royal. 

I did a cake similar to this one last summer.  It was just a little one tier cake topper for a cupcake display.  I used a rough buttercream on it and it was fabulous!  It was 104 the day I delivered it and the wedding was outdoors.  I did have them put it in the cooler as soon as we arrived to deliver it and kept it there until the guests started to arrive. 

Wish you all the best of luck!

Here is a picture of the cake I was talking about in the above post:

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