I Think This Rates As A Disaster!
Decorating By Homemade-Goodies Updated 3 May 2008 , 9:09am by Curtsmin24
Have a look at this video guys....I'd be dyin'!!
I guess this could be filed under the "Don't's" catagory?
It is a traditional royal iced cake, but I think whoever made it forgot to put glycerine in the icing. You would probably end up breaking a tooth if you tried to eat it!
The sad thing is that it probably took someone days to put all the icing on the cake, traditionally you put 4 layers of the stuff on and you have to do one side at a time and let it dry before moving on to the next side and when you had done all four sides and the top you moved on to the next layer.
It is a traditional royal iced cake, but I think whoever made it forgot to put glycerine in the icing. You would probably end up breaking a tooth if you tried to eat it!
But WHY would anyone want to do that to a cake meant for human consumption??? I can see doing it to a dummy cake for display, but NOT for folks to actually eat. Is there an actual reason for it? I'm really curious!
ETA: Missed the 'forgot to add glycerin' part of the explanation. Sorry! 
I hope it wasn't deliberately made to be "rock" solid and I don't think any cake shop or bakery would have made it. I think it is just a case that whoever made it forgot or didn't know that you should add glycering to royal icing being used to coat a cake. Without the glycerine it dries so hard that it is almost impossible to cut.
It is supposed to be hard, just not that hard. If you notice the top tier is just lifted off the cake, it isn't dowled into the bottom tier, in the 19th century royal icing was developed so that tiered cakes could be made, it had to be hard to support the upper tiers. The icing should form a one fifth off the total height of the cake.
With glycerine added it is edible and can be cut although a lot of people don't particularly like it. It is kind of considered really old fashioned now to have a royal iced cake but some people just like the idea of a really traditional cake.
It may have been funny when they were trying to saw it but I'd be upset about the whole thing. Wedding day, everyone there, beautiful cake...little Johnny breaking his teeth trying to eat it. LOL Hopefully she got some type of refund for the mistake. Bet that decorator triple checks everything from now on! Poor thing!
I just feel bad for the bride who just wanted a picture of the cake cutting. Poor girl!
my husband would have loved that cake. He would have gone and got some power tool to cut through it and then as he likes to say, "put another notch in his man card". ....
The first thing I thought was with the plastic seperators, perhaps there was a plastic seperator plates that they couldnt cut through.
LMAO!
I feel so bad about laughing because it was her special day and here they are sawing the cake! At least she was laughing too so I hope she took it in stride and it will make a great story to tell her kids someday!
I thought the same things: cake dummy, royal icing. But why as well? What a video she will have to share! Poor girl. And did you notice no frosting was on anyones hands while touching it to cut, so obviously it was rock hard frosting. Hope the decorator wasn't a relative!
Thanks for posting that "things not to do to your customers" video. I would be so embarrassed.
This video is not my cousin, but she had the EXACT same thing happen. She was an out of town bride and didn't realize a dummy layer was being put in. They used a decorator that had it pre-decorated. My cousin and her new husband SAWED their wedding cake, only to find out it was styro!!
I was really getting mad watching this. They are trying to cut through the plate that the pillars are standing on!! Has no one ever seen a pillared cake before??? I blame the decorator or bakery. It is their responsibility to instruct the customer how to dissemble/cut/serve the cake. I certainly hope the bakery didn't want their plate back.
It didn't look like the end of the world for anyone, but I was surprised no one tried to cut another place on the cake. The royal doesn't sound appetizing to me but it's interesting to hear about other traditions in caking. Looked like it may have been an old video.
OMG!! Terrible! All I could think was, "I hope that lady in red isn't poor old "Aunt Hildy" that made the cake for her and will never live in down!" Like others said, at least the bride is trying to take it in stride instead of having a break down. I thought it might be a dummy too!
I actually had this happen to my niece, I was doing the food and she had a very expensive ($1800.00 for 250 servings) decorator do her cake. It was absolutely beautiful, BUT I literally had to use the back of a huge butchers knife to crack the outer layer of icing to get to the cake part, and when we managed to get in there I would have sworn that the decorator had made this cake more than a week or two ahead , it was white cake with raspberry filling and torted in 8 layers, the cake itself was complete mush inside. I told her to call the decorator and get her money back, it was uncutable and inedible, but as I said it looked stunning.
The same thing happened to my nephew and his wife a few years back. The cake was huge, multiple tiered fruit cake. Would have taken a long time to make. It was beautiful, but they couldn't "hack" into it. I immediately recognized the royal icing....no glycerin, hard as a rock. Had to be taken to the kitchen, icing removed to get to the cake. The ironic part to all of this is the MOB is a wedding planner and deals with the same people all the time. I couldn't imagine she would have allowed this to happen for her daughter's wedding!
i THOUGHT IT WAS THE CAKE SEPARATORS AT FIRST TOO....BUT THAT CAKE WAS ROCK SOLID....I HOPE IT WAS MENT AS A JOKE AND A FEW LAUGHS AFTERWARDS.......
I HAD A BOSS THAT WOULD EAT ANYTHING SWEET THAT CAME INTO VIEW, BEFORE ANYONE ELSE HAD A CHANCE TO LOOK....I ALWAYS WANTED TO MAKE A CAKE SOMEHOW OUT OF A BALLON AND AS SOON AS HE TRIED TO CUT INTO IT........POP......
OK .....NASTY THOUGHTS ARE GONE NOW.
Man I would've loved to see that!!! Too bad you didn't do it, then get it on tape! 
send the video to americas funniest and win 10,000!!! the pillars were not push in ot secured in any way. that is a dummy cake with royal on it. when they were tryingto cut it the pillars were boncing. also she picked up the top layer and is holding it ect.. like it is very light. that may be a dummy too. notice thou no one tried to cut the top layer?
I'm supprised to hear that this cake was covered in royal icing. I have known royal icing to get this hard depending on how much egg whites (meringue powder) was added to it, which you only did when making decoration such as lace, latice ect.
I grew-up in the Caribbean and that is what was used to cover cakes. Thats how I learned, from my Mom. The icing was firm but never hard. If you didn't touch it gently, your fingers would leave dents on it. {Thats how they knew when kids interfered with the cake)
My wedding cake was covered in royal icing (no glycerine) and it was great.
I did it with my Mom's help.
I guess it's all about the recepie.
HA HA HA HA!!!! Oh man, I couldn't turn the sound on, because the babies are sleeping, but that was one of the funniest things I've seen in recent memory... At least they took it well! (And I DO hope they got some sort of refund, or were unknowingly cutting the wrong part of the cake!) 
Now THAT's a crusting buttercream!!
Actually I immediately thought that the royal, and I assume underlying marzipan layers were too old and had hardened. I guess as I watched the video and heard the accents I just assumed it was a traditional fruit cake covered in marzipan and royal icing. I also thought about it being a dummy, but I don't think a dummy cake would have taken that much abuse from the knife. lol
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