Bulges and dents on fondant cake

Can you great cakers help me, please?

Here is what I did:
Made cake on Wednesday- covered layers in saran wrap and left at room temp.
Thursday - torted, stacked and crumb coated, pushed on top to set to avoid bulges later. Completely saran wrapped -placed in fridge.

Thursday - checked cake mushed and pushed on top just a little to help again avoid bulges later. Looked great.

Saturday afternoon- took out of fridge, let set at room temp about 2 hours. Buttercream frosted not real thick, at least you couldn't see the chocolate color or crumbs, etc. thru buttercream , smoothed to perfection with the Viva towel method, (because I have read here that any lump or bump with show thru Fondant). I rolled fondant to around 1/8 inch, not too thin, not too thick. Covered and smoothed. Looked great.

Sunday morning woke up and checked cake -YEP! you guessed it - Bulges and dents.

What am I doing wrong?

For the bulges, the filling is probably squishing out. What kind of filling are you using? Maybe try piping a dam of stiff buttercream to prevent the filling from oozing out.

For the dents I don't know how that could happen, do you have a pic of the dents?

When I have to cover a cake with fondant, I use Toba Garretts method. After I fill the layers, I let the cake settle a couple hours. When I go back to ice...I "spackle" the cake. When you level your layers...save the crumbs and make a paste of cake crumbs, filling and icing..thin enough to spread. Instead of using just buttercream to ice you are giving the cake some extra stability by spackling. After I spackle, I refrigerate about an hour. After I take it out, I use a fondant roller to smooth everything and apply a very thin layer of buttercream so the fondant has something to adhere to. I have always had very good luck with that. Hope I have helped.

Lori

Maybe this top, posted by Leah in the 6-17-11 Friday Night Cake Club, will help:

"OK, first tip of the night:

I learned this in culinary school and had promptly forgotten it. It has to do with those bubbles we all get on cakes. Three weeks ago, every wedding cake I delivered had a bubble. Then it hit me. When my Chef Instructor showed us how to ice a cake, the last step after smoothing the icing on the tier, was to run the edge of the spatula between the cardboard and the cake, "Breaking the seal."

Yes, it will mess up the very bottom of the tier, but that can be repaired later. Just let the cake breathe a bit (even a hour or two) and when you finish assembly with a ribbon or an icing bead the messy part will get hidden. If you're doing a no border of any type cake, then you'll have to repair the lower edge - but you won't be getting bubbles on the side of the cake that have to be repaired.

Once I remember this step, I've had no more bubbles."

Thank you for your posts, these are helpful. I will be doing and using your suggestions.

I just uploaded the cake I am referring to (Fire Helmet Cake)This picture does Not show the bulges in the back of red cake and not completely showing the bulges in the helmet that I carved. I used the same method of construction for the helmet as I originally posted. I just can't bear to show my mistakes. Like I said, I know I'm OCD.
Thanks Again!

I'm still open to every suggestion!