Hi everyone,

I will be making my own wedding cake and I will need to transport it six hours to the city where we will get married.

The cake consists of a few 10" and 14" round cakes as well as an 18" round cake. Well, I really don't want to transport the 18" round cake so thought about using a dummy.

Can people tell the difference between a real and dummy cake if I use both types? I'm unsure if the icing would look different?

Has anyone worked with styrofoam? I also need to press pearls into the side of the cake.

Help please!

No one will ever know the difference if you don't tell them.
Just a few things to keep in mind:

-make sure you use a smooth styrofoam, preferrably the ones that are actually made to be used as cake dummies. I tried the cheap porous kind one time just to see how it worked, and it didn't turn out nearly as nice as the dummies I did with the smooth styro.

-use the same icing that you put on the rest of the cake. This may sound like a gimme, but I know someone who thought you could only ice styrofoam with one certain kind of icing.

-keep the tier heights in mind. Most people torte two cakes into four layers for wedding cake tiers, but this can make the tiers a good inch or two taller than the styrofoam layers. Unless you want to mess with piecing together slabs of styrofoam to get the same height as the real cakes, I would suggest not torting the cakes and just making each tier two cakes with one layer of filling. This usually makes the height closer to the styro height. (this is assuming you are making 2" cakes rather than 3")

-last of all, the good styrofoam can get expensive, but it is reusable. I usually wrap my dummies like packages with wax paper to protect them from grease and then a layer of parchment paper b/c I think it's easier to ice than wax paper. (PS, if you do this, you might be able to get by with using cheaper styrofoam since the paper would cover the holes and give you a smooth working surface, but I haven't tried it. The one time I tried the cheap stuff, I put the icing directly on the styro--I had such a terrible time with it that I never bought that kind again.)

Hope that helps!

check my sea shell cake and the square chocolate cake they both are stirofoam

As far as the 18' layer looking different, I'm not sure. I've only used styrofoam for wedding cakes and I love it. I haven't mixed the two together on a cake. I haven't tried pearls, but I had to press beads into one. I just took the bead- it had a small wire attached - and pressed it right through the fondant into the styrofoam. I find it very easy to work with. I just posted a picture of a wedding cake made with styrofoam. I hope this helps

I've used them a few times to practice on or add a layer, and no one knew the difference. My older sister actually tried to eat the dummy (she started liking off the icing then noticed it wasnt cake).

I had wraped mine in saran wrap so that I could reuse it. It looked better then my real cakes