I read somewhere that Wedding cakes are traditionally iced with Royal icing. Wouldn't that be hard to bite in to? I just thought it was awful strange.

I've read that a lot on here for when you are making dummy cakes for display but I can't for the life of me imagine anyone wanting that on their cake. I too think that would be rather hard and would crack all over if it shifted wrong. I read that they use this a lot in Europe, right? Like on fruit cakes and along with marzipan?

It's been discussed, so you should try doing a search for more complete information. Traditionally, from my limited knowledge, alot of wedding cakes in the UK are fruit cakes, and iced in royal icing. From what I understand the RI is softened a bit by adding glycerin, allowing a cut that won't result in broken shards of RI.

I was asked one year to decorate a "black cake", a dark rum soaked cake for someone from the West indes/ caribbean. All they told me was to ice a few times as the color soaked through. They came back saying that the icing was wrong, it was too soft, and I should ahve used RI. So the next year, they asked me to do another and I used RI. They came back again and said the icing was too hard. I did research after being told more or less it was my error (sorry, but if someone is looking for a VERY specific cake, I feel the onus is on them to provide details). That is when I read about the glycerin.

Yes we do traditionally ice or cakes in royal icing over marzipan. We do add glycerine if a cake stand is used but if we stack with pillars in between the the glycerine is omitted as the icing has to set extremly hard to support the weight of the upper layers and pillars without collapsing. We don't serve our cakes as a dessert either. They are served after the meal and as the cakes are so rich they are served in 1 inch fingers which means you don't really bite into the icing