I made the cake I posted for a wedding Saturday. It's the first quilted cake I've done. The 3 bottom tiers are dummies, and the top being a real cake. I had no problems with the quilting on the dummies at all...probably because they are firm, and easy to deal with. However, doing the real cake was a whole different monster! It took me 2 tries to get it where I was ok with it. It was of course softer than the dummies, and seemed to "billow" (for lack of a better word) out more than the dummies (of course there wasn't any butter cream underneath to mush around). I had the slightest bit of butter cream under the real cake, as thin as I could go...and it still seems to be too much, and IMO looked more like pillows than quilting. Not only that, but the fondant came from the same batch, and the fondant on the real cake looks like a different color than on the dummies.
My question is: How do you get that nice quilting on a real cake? Do it with a frozen cake? I love the look, but after doing that one little 6" top cake, I don't know if I would want to do it again...which make me sad
Any tricks to this? Thanks for any help!
But I had to write and say I think the top tier looks better than the bottom one but its you and the bride that need to be happy. Sorry I am no help.
When I cover dummies, I use a bit of BC as a crumb coat just like I would a cake. Just me.
Personally, I like both ways of doing it. The top looks more like a real quilt! They do all need to look the same. The color difference could be because of the buttercream.
Next time, I would put buttercream under all the tiers to keep them as similar to each other as possible.
I would think being cold & hard would help achieve the look of the bottom tiers. Also, the depth to which you push will change the look.
Sorry I don't know how to help you on this, Though I agree with Milkmonkey. I like the top one better also. It looks more like a quilt while the bottom looks like a drum to me. Great job on the cake
I think your issue clearly reflects the "problem" with mixing real cakes and dummies. If people know cake, the differences are usually very obvious. Given the option, I really prefer not to mix the two............
If I needed to do a similar cake, I'd ice the tier, chill, cover with fondant, chill again, and then quilt it--and that would be only if I had been able to achieve a very crisp upper edge similar to the dummies I'm using.
It could be done the opposite way, too, and that would be to soften the dummy edges significantly--to mimic the more rounded edges of a real covered cake--and I'd put a layer of BC on it, too, before applying the fondant and then quilting.
When I do a dummy, I generally just massage it well with crisco before covering it with fondant.
HTH
Rae
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