the Wilton instructor I have was complaining the other day about string work on wedding cakes and how she discourges brides from using it because it all cracks off en route to the wedding and then she has to do it all over again at the wedding location, etc...

If I use a non-crusting buttercream such as IMBC, will this problem go away? Does IMBC never dry out??

Thanks!

No, IMBC doesn't dry out but it would not be recommended (at all!!) for string work. String work should be done in royal and then it should dry hard enough not to break. Really delicate stuff may have to be done after delivery, so save yourself the stress and just do that part there only instead of twice.

I don't like stringwork and haven't had anyone ask for a wedding cake with it (and if they did, I'd probably steer them away from it), BUT

I did take a wedding cake class where we did some stringwork, and she had a nifty tip for keeping it in place. She had us pipe all the string work for a section of the cake, then she'd lift up that side of the cake just a bit and sort of give it a little shake, so the strings would gently touch to the sides of the cake and stick, and she said that way they were safe to travel (and she did TONS of cakes through the 70s and 80s when this type of work was 'the thing').

Of course if the point is to have them hanging free, then that wouldn't work, but I thought it was a nifty trick.