Hello!

I am doing a 12x18x2 graduation cake for my niece next month for graduation and she has asked for polka dots.

My original thought was I would use buttercream for the base and do the polka dots out of fondant but the more I think about it, I think I need to do one or the other because the look of it might be weird. I've worked more with buttercream but I have experience with fondant so I could do either or. So my question is this .... which is better?

And if I do buttercream, how could I do the polka dots so they are all different sizes and shapes?

Thanks in advance for any ideas!

My suggestion would be to ask the person who wants the cake to be made because there are many people who do not even know what fondant is.  Before I knew about cakes, all I had ever tasted was butter cream and would have hated having fondant on a cake. Some people love fondant and others hate it. So the choice should be left up to the person ordering the cake. That way, there are no surprises and less chance of people complaining. 

I use fondant accents on buttercream all the time and I do not think it looks weird, neither do any of my customers. :)

Very common to use fondant accents on buttercream.  In fact, a client recently gave me the option to do all fondant or buttercream with fondant accents, and I chose buttercream because I liked the look of contrast between the two.  You should check out CorrieCakes.  She does amazing work with fondant on buttercream.  

Honestly, I've never done polka dots in buttercream because they end up looking weird to me.  Fondant accents are so much neater and cleaner, IMO!

Wow! I did and she doesn't incredible work with buttercream

Look at this one - lots of sheet cakes, too. I wonder what kind of icing this is.

ABeautiful, right?!? Definitely buttercream with fondant accents, but no clue which recipe she uses.

I believe she says on her fb page that it's a crusting buttercream.

ACorrie is a robot I think, I don't know how else to explain her perfect work. ;-)

Thank you everybody for the information. I was overthinking it, probably