My best friend is getting married this week and I am making the grooms cake (12x18 sheet cake). The groom's favorite cake is pound cake so I want to make that, but pound cake is traditionally glazed (right?). I also know it's sweet and full of flavor.

The theme is "beach" and I'm planning to make a beach scene - 1/2 brown sugar and 1/2 blue piping gel. So the frosting will be a really thin layer and not visible but needs to be white I suppose (to show off the blue gel) and needs to hold up under the sugar and gel.

So my question is what kind of frosting should I use? I know buttercream is the standard but will that be too sweet? Could I do buttercream with rum/coconut flavor (flavors in the pound cake recipe)?

I want it to look good (duh) but I want it to taste good too!

Suthern pound cakes are usually plain, but glazes are also popular. Buttercream is not usually used, but that's up to you. I would ask the person paying for the cake.

That's what I was going to suggest - ask the person paying.

If you add a hint of almond flavoring to the BC, it's cuts down on the sweetness but you don't taste the almond.

I have iced pounds cakes - if it doesn't "look"like a pound cake, not many will know it's a pound cake... believe me, a lot of people easily swayed by the power of suggestion.

If the groom likes pound cake, he may like it because it is usually plain. And most southern pound cakes are not sweet. Better check on that one.

Here's the recipe I'm using (tripled):

1 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening
3 cups white sugar
5 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1 teaspoon rum extract
1 teaspoon coconut extract

The bride is my best friend and I'm not charging her for the cake -- it's my gift/help for the wedding so she says "just do whatever"...I can't get an answer from her...which is why I'm asking you guys

I'm assuming there has to be some sort of icing under the "sand" (brown sugar) and "water" (blue piping gel) right? All those flavors are going to throw off the taste of the cake anyway aren't they? (Ugg!)

So it won't really matter because they aren't going to know its pound cake if I put buttercream or not...

If the order was a beach themed pound cake how would you all do it?

It's getting down to crunch time and I'm clueless about pound cake (can you tell )

Please...any help or suggestions?

I did a birthday cake for a friend that was pound cake and covered it with buttercream. I wasnt sure how it would taste but everyone seemed to really like it. Its the Homer Simpson cake in my photos.
They dont have to eat the frosting if they dont want to.

There's a coconut buttercream here. It's delicious. It follows an IMBC method, I know some people have done a SMBC and added the flavors at the end.

My boyfriend doesn't like frosting, and not even IMBC can entice him. He asked for more of this one.

http://susikochenundbacken.blogspot.com/2011/02/pina-colada-cake-for-special-birthday.html

Thank you! This encourages me I think I'll just do buttercream and put a little rum or coconut flavor in it.

I did a wedding cake this past weekend that had two tiers of traditional lemon pound cake. The recipe called for three cups of sugar and I knew confectioner's sugar based buttercream would be too sweet. I used vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream and it was perfect.