I have a wedding cake due at the end of May and it is a very simple cake in terms of decoration. This cake will have 7 or 8 tiers, square cakes with cropped corners, covered with white fondant, and royal icing dots following all the lines.

The only real decoration on the cake is the bride and grooms monograms. There is only one set on the whole cake.

Problem: I can't the royal icing monograms to work out so that they are really smooth. I have tried everything suggested on CC. I rolled out fondant and gumpaste and couldn't get the cuts to be straight and smooth. My plan was to cut out the letters in gumpaste and let them dry and then coat with royal icing. This would make them more stable and less likely to break. I did some samples just out of gumpaste rolled out in strips and dried and then coated with RI - they are very sturdy and looked pretty good. Now I have chosen the font, printed out the letters in a size to fit on the side of the cake and that is where I run into problems. The exacto knife and I are having a war - jagged edges, parts of the letters tear, can't get good letters to save my life.

I wish there was someplace I could order alphabet cutters with a really nice elegant font that would be about 3 1/2" tall. I have some smaller alphabet cutters from Patchwork Cutters and love them. No problem at all. But cutting by hand isn't going to work. I have carpal tunnel in my right hand and it tends to make my hands very shaky in such detailed work.

Anyone have any suggestions? I am even willing to pay someone to make the gunpaste letters for me and then I could put the royal icing on them. Didn't know where else to post this, so hope this is the right forum.

do you have a picture of what you are trying to create? I don't really understand why you want to cut out letters from GP and then cover them in RI.

can you just pipe the letters with RI? you can print the letters on paper and put a piece of parchment on top, then just pipe and let dry and very carefully remove them from the parchment and apply to the cake or the plaque for the monogram.

The cake has to travel 3 hours to the wedding reception site. I know that royal icing letters are very fragile. I wanted to make sure that the letters were very stable and able to travel that far and when I set the cake up I can attach them.

Due to my carpal tunnel, I am having problems piping smooth and even letters. I know that I need several sets of letters just in case of a disaster. So that is why I was trying to cut the letters out of gumpaste and then coat with the royal icing. I don't have a photo of the cake, but it is in Martha Stewart's wedding cake book - the Beribboned Bouqet Cake. The monograms are such an important decoration that I can't mess this up. I have used other alphabet cutters with great success. But I haven't found any cutters that are this large. If I could get the letters to cut out smooth and stay whole, then I would be home free because I know that the gumpaste coated with royal icing will work. I did the parchment paper thing and my piping isn't working.

I need the font to be Times New Roman or something very similar (Perpetua would work as well) and they need to be 3" or so for the L and Z and 3 1/2" for the K.

L K Z

Try some colorflow. But I still dont see the need to cover gunpaste with RI. I would use either or.
Edna