How Do I Keep Top Heavy Decorations From Tearing Cake?
Decorating By letsgetcaking Updated 30 Apr 2013 , 6:20pm by letsgetcaking
I am making a first birthday cake next week, and I can't decide the best way to go about this. The design I am planning will have large fondant lollipops sticking out of both the bottom and top tiers. I've made "exploding" cakes before with small balls of fondant attached to wire, which I placed in straws for stability. But, I'm concerned about the weight of the fondant lollipops. How would you keep them in place?
Also, I can't decide if I should insert them after delivery or not. Normally, I would say after, but I will only have a few minutes to set up the cake and go. (The party is being held in a bounce room that is rented out by the hour. I believe I am arriving the same time as the guests, and I don't want to be fiddling with the cake with everyone standing around.)
Any advice you have for me is welcome. Thank you!
AThose are made from fondant, you can tell they're not real. Having said that, if I was a kid who saw the lollipops and thought they were real and they weren't I'd be MAD.
If they're on sticks that are long enough you can just put them in and they should be fine. Do it when you deliver, it won't take long. You could rig something up to keep them in place but if you do it on site it won't take long.
Thank you for your advice, Costumeczar. I really would like to wait until I'm on site to add the lollipops. I think I'm paranoid because every time I've decorated with the balls on the end of the wire, I could not get them to stop spinning around and ending up pointed in the wrong direction. Do you think the sticks will stay put and not swivel around?
The way I dealt with the swiveling problem before was to prop the wires up where they needed to stay and I used royal icing to keep them in place. The royal icing takes so long to harden, which is why I worried about adding the lollipop decorations at the last minute.
Do you think that if you got a long enough stick and stuck it very far into the cake that it would keep it from tearing or moving? Perhaps instead of a lollipop stick you could buy one of those very long skewers for kabobs or camp fires and cut it down.
AWhen I did a cake with lollipops, I think they had really long sticks to begin with. I don't remember any problems with them swivelling around because the stick goes straight into the cake and as long as you don't wiggle it and enlarge the hole it will stay where you put it.
Thank you, AndreasCakes and Costumeczar. I will plan on using long sticks and adding them at the venue. You've both put my mind at ease.
Good luck! Please post a picture when you're finished. I'd love to see how it turns out! :)
I would assemble everything except the lollipops. Get to the venue slightly ahead of time and (a) either put them together in the boot of my car or (b) ring the venue ahead of time and ask if they would mind you assembling the cake there. Oft times the venue will have spare tables or a spot for you to assemble food- can't harm to ask.
I once put the finishing parts on a birthday cake in the car boot, thoughto be honest it was only one tier (hard candy creations that I didn't want to go tacky).
What I've done to stop the swivelling in the past was to make the items, in this case lollipops, in such a way that the heaviest side will point downwards so the front faces the front.
That made no sense.
So for the lollipop, I'd insert the stick slghtly to the side of center so that I know that one side is going to fall downwards, and the front of the lollipop will point forwards. Then the swivelling doesn't matter, because it will swivel in the right direction.
I've done fondant lollipops and just stuck them in the tiers before transport and it was in June so I'd say warm out. No problems.
AI've made a cake like this before and the cake DID explode after I delivered it. I waited until I delivered the cake because I was afraid the lollipops would pull on the cake during transit so I put them on the cake when I set it up. About an hour later I received a text from the client with pictures of the cake torn off from the lollipops. It was awful!! Another time I made a fondant figurine that was about 6 inches tall. It was supposed to be in the middle of the top tier. I gave it to the client in a separate box and she put it on the cake when she got it home. It too pulled the cake away and fell over. I would love to know how to keep this from happening again!
A
Original message sent by dkbateman
I've made a cake like this before and the cake DID explode after I delivered it. I waited until I delivered the cake because I was afraid the lollipops would pull on the cake during transit so I put them on the cake when I set it up. About an hour later I received a text from the client with pictures of the cake torn off from the lollipops. It was awful!! Another time I made a fondant figurine that was about 6 inches tall. It was supposed to be in the middle of the top tier. I gave it to the client in a separate box and she put it on the cake when she got it home. It too pulled the cake away and fell over. I would love to know how to keep this from happening again!
You could support the topper with a board underneath it and dowels it like you would a regular tier. That way it would be sitting on the board and not the cake.
If you're super nervous about the cake tearing, you could take a corrugated plastic round the same size or a little smaller than the tier the lollipops will be in, and cut out little notches that you'll insert the lollipop sticks into. It would sit under the board for the tier above it, or it could just be the board for the cake above it. The notches would stick out, be about half an inch wide, and have a little hole in them to stick the lollipop stick through. I can't describe it very well, but I see it in my head...I'll do a video or something to show you what I mean and post it later.
Thank you, everyone, for your helpful replies. I really appreciate it.
Costumeczar, if you do end up making the video, I would love to see it. I'm a visual person, and it would be great to see a demonstration!
here it is...Ignore my wild hand waving, that's how I talk and it's perfectly NORMAL.
Costumeczar, that is brilliant! Thank you so much for taking the time to do that. I think I will make something just like you showed in the video.
I ABSOLUTELY LOVE that idea!!! Thank you so much for the video (I'm a visual person also). I'm not sure if I just made heavy lollipops or if my cake was too soft but when they pulled the cake down in a couple hours I wasn't sure how others were able to do it. Thank you again!!
AGlad to help...theoretically, the lollipops could still shift and tilt, but this way they won't rip through the edge of the cake.
Yeah! It worked! Thank you for the video, Costumeczar! I'll post a picture once I get a chance to upload it to my computer. Thank you, everyone, for all of the tips. You are wonderful!
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