My dear adopted Mom call and asked if I could decorate a fake 3 tier wedding cake for her niece in another province ( I dont know them). The wedding colour is yellow and I can design it however I want.

My question is what type of buttercream do I use? I need a simple buttercream icing recipe for the fake cake, do you have a recommend recipe that crust.
Should I use buttercream or should I use fondant? But then again this is a low budget cake, so buttercream will be cheaper. Or should I use royal icing instead of buttercream.
A fondant cake will be quick and easy and it would look more elegant?

Ok, What to choice buttercream, fondant or royal icing? I need helpppppppp. Mom is buying all the things I need.

The tier are 6", 8" and 10" round. My design idea so far is yellow cornelli lace piped on a white iced cake with yellow roses on the bottom of each tier and on top of the 6". The cardboard would have a yellow ribbon attached. (Is this idea to old school).

Please give me a modern idea.

My adopted mom has helped me alot over the years. The cake is her niece so I need this cake to be banging if you know what I mean. This cake has to look good for my adopted mom sake.

Go woth buttercream- only because if they are using a dummy cake, the bride will be serving the guests from a kitchen cake (a sheet cake hidden in the kitchen). They won't be covering the kitichen cake with fondant. You want the ktichen cake and the fake cake to be as close as possible, so the guests don't know they aren't being served the actual wedding cake.

Is the top tier supposed to be dummy or real? If it's dummy what are the bride and groom going to cut into?

The 6" will be dummy as well. When time to take the picture, they will pretend to cut the dummy.

Just as Sox-n-Pat advised, b/c will be cheaper to make.

Might I ask why you're making a dummy and not a real wedding cake. Do the bride & groom not like cake and are serving something else instead...

The reason being, making a dummy cake isn't that much less work than making a real cake. And unless you're shipping the dummy cake, you'll still need to transport it to the wedding/reception venue.

Here's a thread that I hope you find useful... Has popular CC recipes for American buttercreams, several types of fondant and doctored cake mix (WASC and other flavors) - and so much more.

Everything you need to know to make, decorate and assemble tiered/stacked/layer cakes:

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-605188.html

HTH

Hi, I once saw on a forum on here an idea for sticking in a wedge of real cake in a fake cake. I don't remember very much about the whole subject, but what I do remember is this. they assembled their fake cake and then took a wedge out of it. then they put a wedge of real cake in it's place and decorated it and marked it in a way that the people cutting would know the markings and would be cutting real cake and sampling it. I would think that you could get the fake cake all decorated except for a portion around where you were going to cut out a wedge. Slip the real cake in and finish decorating and marking it in a way they would know where to cut. I can understand the fake cake because maybe they want the look of a real wedding cake, but won't have enough people to feed that much cake too. also a fake cake would be cheaper. If you pardon me, I found out recently that you could use spackling to decorate fake cakes. I imagine that this would still work even if you wanted to put real cake in. I have seen fake cakes that have had spackling and you couldn't tell the difference. You could cut your wedge out ahead of time and spackle everything else. Wait until it completely dries and then slip your real cake in. I would put like slips of Wax paper on my real cake on both sides of wedge. This way your real cake is not touching the spackling and if You had a mere 1/16th of an inch of it sticking out above or on the outside of the cake you would be able to have a marker of some kind to decorate the cake so you would know where to cut it. then when you got the top of it decorated where you knew where to cut then you could hide the wax paper on the outside edge with icing and finish your decorating. Nobody is going to see it. You and the ones cutting the cake(the bride and groom) will be the only ones who know the cake isn't real. Hopefully this has been helpful. Goodluck. Make sure you take pictures of it and put on here.

JahH, the bride and groom will serve a sheet cake to the guest.

Thanks everyone for the info.

Here are some inspirational cakes:
(Yellow cornelli, round wedding.)

http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1344802

http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1039243

http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1275981

http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1315923

http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=21535

HTH

If you want to match the yellow colour to their wedding colours then you'll need to get your mom to get you a sample so you can match the colour.


So are you going to be shipping this cake to another province or is your mom going to take it?

My mom going to take it to the wedding. She is their visting her family now.

Slight change of design
6" white base with yellow cornelli lace and ribbon at the bottom
8" whie base with bride and groom initials and ribbon at the bottom
10" white base with yellow cornelli lace and ribbon at the bottom

Thanks for the inspirations JanH

If your still deciding on a style there are 16 pages in the wedding gallery with yellow as a keyword:

http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&meta=search&type=full&search=yellow&album=84&search_user=


Here are just some examples from the 1st couple of pages:

http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1202272

http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1253938

http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1241275

http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1388752

http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1370205

http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=925143

http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=722663

http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=7491

You're very welcome, majormichel.

Look forward to seeing pictures.

I finally did the cake its in my gallery. I did not do the cornelli lace as originial plan.

Thanks again for you help.

I think you did a great job. I'm sure your "mom" and her niece are going to love it!