Hi everyone!

I have a wedding cake coming up in a couple of months, and it will be BC on the outside with raspberry filling. On my cakes with filling, I use a bead of BC on the edge in between the layers to dam the icing. I use a mixture of the Viva towel technique and the hot knife to smooth my icing, but the past few cakes I have done had a noticeable bulge where the layer divisions are. I was just wondering if anyone had an easy fix for this. I have even used more icing on the sides, but that bulge is still apparent. I just don't want this to happen with the wedding cake, so any advice is greatly appreciated. I didn't always have this problem, so I am wondering if it may be the modified Crisco.

Thanks!

Your dam is not stiff enough. Add more powdered sugar to it. Sugarshack says it should almost be thick enough to roll into a ball. I find it pretty hard to squeeze out of the icing bag. You shouldn't have any problems if you just thicken it up a bit!

also make sure you're not over filling it. If the filling passes the dam that's when you get the bulge.

thick thick icing or the dam like mindy said!

Also after you fill your cake you want to crumb coat it and let it sit for a few hours for it to settle. Once it has settled, if there is a bludge you can smooth it out before you ice the cake.

Following Sharon's instructions, I make my icing for the dam very thick. In fact, I can almost knead it. Never had a bulge.

Just wanted to share what I do that seems to work. In addition to the very stiff dam that SugarShack does, I make "cake spackle" as mentioned in a Toba Garrett book.
I put the spackle on the outer sides of the cake and it gives it a nice firm smooth foundation once it kind of crusts.
This is what I do in leiu (sp?) of sugarshack's method of trimming the sides perfectly even. I'm too lazy for that.
Cake spackle is just frosting mixed with cake crumbs till thick but spreadable.

i use a dam of thick icing and let it settle a few hrs or overnight than come back and smooth the sides again if any bulging has occured...got that from sugar shack and it helps alot..hth