I may know scratch baking and a little business, but for decorating, I need some help from the experienced out there in CC land.

I try my best not to make wedding cakes, but I have one for Saturday. It's for my niece. I will travel with it for two hours unstacked, individually boxed and ready except for a ribbon border.

Friday, I plan to cover the tiers in fondant. I will have to refrigerate the cakes because they are all perishable. Two of the tiers will have quilting with black dragees. I plan to attach the dragees with piping gel.

Last summer I had one cake sweat in the refrigerator. I had not had that happen before or after. What if the tiers sweat? Would I be better off to store the cakes completely covered in the boxes ready to go, covered in plastic, and add the dragees after they are out of the box at the venue or will it be safe to attach the dragees before I box them up? If it sweats, will those black dragees bleed color? They are CK Products black sugar pearls.

I want to add that the sweating happened because I had to keep putting that cake back and forth in the refrigerator as I was decorating because it was perishable. It was more detailed. This current cake is simple so I may be able to avoid the back and forth thing. But if not, on this cake, I will cover, refrigerate, quilt, refrigerate. I have time at the wedding to add those pearls, so that scenario is ok too.

Help!!

Susan

If you have time to add the pearls at the venue, I would do it there. You cannot take the chance that the color from the black pearls will run on something as important as a wedding cake.

What exactly is perishable about the cake? And how will you handle that issue with the cake being on display before it's served? A perishable cake can only be outside of refrigeration for a total of four hours, and that includes decorating, and display time. Then it has to be thrown out.

The caterer will not allow me to put the cake in the refrigerator at the venue. If it was not my niece, I would have called and complained to the venue. She's afraid one of her employees will hit it. But since my business is based on delivery, I have all of the means to keep the tiers cool myself. The perishable part is cooked custard. The other issue, not perishable, but I don't want the tiers with cream cheese buttercream to get soft. The IMBC on one tier will soften too, but that's the only one I'm not concerned with.

This is one of those long, drawn out weddings that I hate to attend, 3:00 ceremony, 5:00 dinner, 6:00 drinks, 7:00 cake cutting. I'm going to go crazy being bored all day, so with the issue with no way to stack anyway, I'm going to take the cakes out of the coolers and stack them during that 6:00 cocktail hour. I only have to attach those crisscross ribbons to two layers, wide ribbon around the bottoms, and the other two have the dragees, 10" and 6". The quilting will be done ahead of time. My daughter will do the dragee application with me if I do it there.

So I have time. I would really rather have it done, but I can do it there. The time my fondant got condensation and my hard figures softened was last May. Quite a few CC members were on here talking about it. The cake was fine. It just was irritating. But the decorations were fondant, not dragees.