I am new to cake decorating and am loving it. My cakes are always nice and moist and people rave about them, but they tend to fall apart as I am cutting them. I have a wedding coming up in a week and a half and I need to know if I am doing anything wrong. I have been using cake boxes as a base for my friends cakes. (becouse I am not doing this as a bisness and its cheaper for my friends and there wedding cakes when its s simple white or chocolat flavor they want.)

I bake the cakes in the morning and let them cool a good long while. Then in the afternoon or evening I dirty frost and let it crust, and then add my last bit of butter cream of fondant depending on what I am doing. Should I maybe be baking the day before I frost? Or freezing them first? Help please!

ATry the wasc recipe.

I'm sorry, what is the wasc?
 

WASC is white almond sour cream cake.. if you search for it under recipes on the cake central site, you will get one.

To Hamaranpuu.... when I was brand new to baking cakes, I had the same issue with my cakes falling apart and I quickly learned that if I didn't level the cakes that same thing would happen. Are you cutting off the dome part of your cake before icing and stacking? Just a thought....

Hamaranpuu,

I found the same problem with box cakes.  For a firmer cake, you might want to try using a box cake mixed and a pound cake mixed, then fold the two batters together.  Since you are trying to save $$,  What I do to get the moistness and stability, I use a standard scratch wedding cake recipe then add a box cake batter to it for moistness.   Good luck.

Thanks therealmrsriley I do always level my cakes and I have the basic dirty icing and stacking and everything down pretty good. Its just when I go to cut in to it. I get about a quorter threw a round and then the middle starts to crumble on me. It might help when I cut this wedding cake event style...(I am hoping)

My bride just wants plane or white cake...so I am a bit leery of trying the white almond sour cream. But it sounds good. I will have to try it for my self soon.

Thanks Sweet Granny, I am in a vary vary small area so I don't know if they have a pound cake mix available. I will check it out! Thanks for all the suggestions.

One last thing, when I do my box mixes, I add an extra egg and a box of pudding. I'm wondering if that'll help...?

I have added pudding to a box mix before, it probably would help, but again I would have to use vanilla and this bride wants JUST WHITE CAKE. She was pretty firm on that. Her mom even asked her a few times if she wasn't meaning vanilla, and she said "No, just pain white, plain white Mom!" (and no she is not a bridzila) So I am afraid the pudding might add a bit to much vanilla flavor for her.

Again thank you everyone for the suggestions. I will have to see if I can play around in my kitchen and come up with something.

An after thought...I do NOT own a stand mixer, could this be part of my problem. I have to hand mix things with an old fasion wisk when they get to a certin volume becuse my little hand mixer isn't powerful enough. Last wedding I did I burnt out a motor and had to buy a new one, and that was just a dubble batch of Butter Cream.

Ok so here is what a chef taught me.

Add either a cup of sour cream or mayo to the recipe for moistness. Now I have tried both and will tell you the sour cream makes it firmer than the mayo.

I can't taste either one unless its chocolate and then it only makes my chocolate more delicious when I use they mayo.

As for firming it up I do box mixes doctored with 4 eggs per box. See if that helps.
 

Maybe test the recipes with a bit of extra flour in them? I only just found out that the difference between an English Victoria sponge cake (equal amounts of butter, sugar,eggs and flour) and Maderia (think you guys call it pound cake, its a bit denser than a victoria sponge but tastes similar) is just the same ingredients and amounts as a victoria sponge cake except with half the amount of flour again because its the flour that helps the structure. I'd bake a test cake first to check it works but I know what it's like when you finally find a great recipe and don't want to spend ages testing others for flavour etc. Good luck! Hope it works.

(If it doesn't work, you can blame a PME tutor!) ;)

Thanks everyone so much for the help. The wedding was yesterday and everything went wonderful. The cake cut well. I ended up adding an extra egg and half a cup of sour cream for each box. If your interested the cake is my Purple Blossom Wedding Cake, in my photos.

It turned out really nice!