URGENT!! Icing a wedding cake

kazzaw

I've "volunteered" to decorate a wedding cake at short notice for a wedding next Saturday!!

It's years since I've done this but I'm sure it's like riding a bike.

The bride has supplied me with 6", 8" & 10" ready iced luxury celebration cakes from Asda so I've got a flat canvas to start.

I've got some cutters so would like a recipe for icing that can be rolled out to make heart shapes to stick on the sides. I'm assuming they can be stuck on with egg white?

From what I remember the ready to roll icing from supermarkets dries up quickly & doesn't give a very good finish. I've looked in my books but there are so many different variations in the recipes!!!

I've also got some edible silver paint. Does it take long to dry & should I paint the hearts before I put them on the cake?

Any tips on supporting the weight of the cakes on tiers? How many pillars will I need for these sizes?

I've also considered piling the cakes up "American Style" Any thoughts?

Hoping some of you experienced MSEers can help as I can't afford to waste any time as I work & am also in the middle of making my costumes for the WI panto next week!!

kazzaw

Gingernutmeg

Bought ready to roll icing is absolutely fine - making something similar yourself will work out to be far more expensive and much more difficult. The better quality stuff can be bought from cake decorating shops ... supermarket stuff really isn't the best. Good quality fondant icing shouldn't dry out too quickly if you don't use too much icing sugar while you're rolling it out. Once it's one the cake, you can gently 'buff' it with the heel of your hand to get a nice smooth slightly shiny finish (sorry, just re-read and realised the cakes are already iced, but the principle of this is the same for decorations too). If you're going to stick hearts to the outside of the cake, then do it with a little bit of water icing (icing sugar and water). This should work well and carries none of the risk of raw egg. Shapes should be painted first, beacuse it's easier to re-roll another heart than it is to get paint mistakes off the cake lol.

Piling the cakes up US style is much easier than using pillars. If you do decide to use pillars, then if you've got heavy fruit cakes then you're going to need to use pieces of dowelling pushed into the cakes, so that the weight is supported by the cake boards rather than the cake itself. Cake pillars are hollow so that will hide the dowelling and give the illusion of the cake being supported by the pillars. An alternative are the plastic 'spacers' that you can get - they distribute the weight much more evenly. Or, you can hire metal cake stands from many places which do away with the risk of balancing cakes on top of each other. Personally, for the size of cakes you've been given, I'd go for something like this or the US style over pillars, as a 10" cake isn't *that* big when you think about it having to support the weight of two more cakes/icing/decorations/pillars/boards etc.

The metal stands also give the cake much more 'impact', as they make it look bigger, spreading it out horizontally rather than pushing it up vertically. I recently decorated three cakes for my grandparents golden wedding anniversary, and that's what I used. I wrapped the chrome stand in gold ribbon, and decorated the cakes with gold hearts and topped each with an 'explosion' (lol) of golden feathers and gold hearts on wires. I made favours to match and it looked really lovely all laid out.

Sharra

I did a very simple wedding cake for my uncle using ready to roll icing - I would post a pic but I can't work out how to do it lol.
I just cut out pink and lilac hearts in different sizes to put on it, and bought a cute bride and groom figure on the top.
I would recommend going to a 'proper' cake decorating shop to buy the icing, it is good quality and does save loads of time.

carolt

We iced and decorated our own wedding cake to save money - were up till midnight the night before our wedding finishing the thing!!!

Would absolutely NOT recommend anyone else trying this - definitely a false economy and a lot, lot harder than it looks.

But getting a friend/family member to do it - that's different.

kazzaw - you're a very nice person!.....

kazzaw

Well I've been out this afternoon & bought some icing from a "proper" cake icing shop.

I've sketched out a plan so wish me luck that everything works out tomorrow!!

I'll let you know how I get on. Thnaks for the tips etc. :beer: