I've wondered this for awhile, but especially since my last cake. I always assume when I make a cake with a lot of fondant decorations and embellishments, people remove as much as they can before cutting and serving. I mean a normal layer of fondant is ok and most people dont mind it on their plate. But Ive seen (and made) some cakes with quite a bit of fondant on them.layers of different colors, decorations, etc But when people come to pick them up, I always tell them, youre going to want to remove as much of the decoration as possible before serving. Or if I'm serving it, I remove it myself.

The last cake I made (a diaper bag for a baby shower) I was invited to the shower. When it was time to cut the cake, I was asked if I wanted to cut it. I think everyone was a little nervous about how to go about it . I very eagerly accepted stating that I wanted to strip it down before cutting. So I went about taking everything I possibly could off, creating a pretty big pile of fondant scraps. Everyone was wondering why I was doing that and why I would want to just throw it in the trash??? I really just assumed everyone did this. I know for certain they wouldnt have wanted all that fondant on their plates.

Do you advise people to remove the extras? Or if you are serving, do you remove as much as you can? Or do you just let each person deal with it on their plate? I've seen some amazing cakes in the gallery, but WOW what do you do with all that stuff

I take off anything dried and hard, like maybe large royal icing flowers, any figures or items made like that.

But layers of fondant, no I don't take it off. My red cake in my photo section had stars on top and a ribbon around it. I took of the ribbon and the stars and laid them next to the cake. The hostess kept the stars for future use. But I left the fondant on and let people decide if they wanted to eat it or not.

Basically if I could put a knife through it, it stayed on the cake and was served that way.

Any of the pre-dried decorations I would remove...like anything 3D. If it's only a small pre-dried piece I leave it on, or if it's an extra layer or two of fondant in places I would not remove before cutting. You can seriously make the cake look like a terrible mess if you try to remove everything down to the first fondant layer.

Will see if I can find a couple pics for a visual of what I mean...

I remove any modeled figures, gumpaste or fondant flowers, large fondant balls, ropes, pearls, etc. and anything on a pick. Outer layers of fondant are left intact, but I notice lots of people don't eat it...I know I don't! I typically do buttercream cakes for just that reason.

Okay so here's one I cut and served myself. The chairs, figurine, trees and icecream shop I removed. (Obviously you're not going to serve those!) I didn't remove the waves (which is an extra two or three layers of fondant in places). I left the lettering and starfish on the cake (these were pre-dried decorations, but made from very thin pieces, so no big deal)


Another one I served. I removed the large decorations (foxes, building) but left on the little toadstools, flowers and bits of grass.


People like getting little decorations on their piece of cake, they get all excited - they're like "Ooh look! I got a little toadstool on mine!" It's kind of fun.