Final Practice Cake Before The Wedding...a Columed Tier
Decorating By Taigen Updated 14 May 2006 , 9:32pm by Taigen
Well this is my last "no reason other than practice" cake before daughters August wedding. I have at least 4 cakes with a "purpose" to do between now and then so I will still keep my hand in this.
Even though daughter doesn't want a columed cake I wanted to try one just to see if I understood the concept. It is also my first attempt with royal frosting (remember THAT post?? and thanks for the advice given 
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This is a lemon cake done in proper wilton pans (another first) the filling is lemon curd. It is iced with snow white frosting. The roses are all royal frosting all other flowers are gumpaste, as are the butterflies. Unfortuantely my son took some of the flowers to school for his girlfriend so if some of these ones look hurried it's because they were!! I did dragonflies too just to see how they would look. The bow is marshmallow fondant.
There are lots of pictures from beginning to end so I will post them in several replies.
I would love to hear your input as it is you guys who have "taught" me so very much....and I am incredbily grateful to all of you
Here is cake number 5 ....enjoy the pics.
Wow, did you say this was your first columned cake? Oh my gosh, this is incredible.. Pretty soon we'll be seeing you on the FoodNetwork on Sugar Rush!
That is gorgeous. Your daughter is very lucky to have such a talented mother to make her cakes for her.
That's terrific! What kind of support did you use under the glasses?
WOW, wow, wow, wow, WOW!!! I love that cake! your flowers are amazing, and the butterflies... Well i have a soft spot for them and yours look GREAT!!. I love the glasses as the pillars, I have been wanting to do something similiar however only have two glasses that match atm 
The butterfly on the glasses compliments the rest of the cake perfect.
I can't wait to see the final cake if this was the practice!
Leily
((thanks))) everyone, your encouragement means a lot to me. I have learned so much from all of you!!! You guys ALL get a blue ribbon for kindness from me 
To answer some questions. I bought the mini wine glasses at the dollar store for .50 cents each. The butterfly photo floats inside them, kind of hard to see that in the photo's but if you could see the cake in person you would see them floating. I attached the correct height dowel to the glass base so that when I inserted the top tier holder the glasses would just "sit" on the bottom layer like there was no "weight" to it. There is no circle under the glasses as I wanted it to look that way. The top tier is supported underneath by the tier attached to the glasses you can see in one photo and also double boards under the cake itself. Next time I would pipe around the foil that is showing...but hey this was my first time and I'm learning. I had made little lace point butterflies to go around but I felt it had enough going on already. I have saved them and may use them at some other time.
Before placing the flowers I used the top tier holder to mark where the glasses would land so I could then place the gumpaste flowers appropriately. I was nervous putting that tier down when the flowers were already on I'll tel ya!!
The butterflies are on lollipop sticks. When I had the royal frosting going I made a bunch of what I call holders. Just a dab of frosting like I was going to make a rose but then I inserted the sticks at an angle and on others I inserted toothpicks. That way when I wanted to put the roses on the side I just dabbed icing on the holder, pushed the rose into it and inserted it in the cake. It seems to have worked pretty well. I like the versitility of being able to put any of the flowers on these holders and will definetly use that method again.
Daughter and fiance came last night to see this and now want THIS cake for the wedding. Not sure I can pull that off as we would have to carry it down two flights of stairs and through the yard!! Actually it wouldn't be us doing it, it would be my friends who are going to set the food up in the tent while we are having our photo's taken. I will talk with them and see if they are comfortable with it or not. I would also do the cake in fondant as we really like the look of it for a special occassion. I also have a surprise for the cake topper that I would have to re-work/think out if they really did want this cake. Also I have all those life size edible butterflies and dragonflies I made that they had wanted so much in the beginning. They had also wanted the large gift bow I had made on the last cake before they saw this cake too.....so I'm really not sure what the final cake will be hahaha. I think they have too many choices right now. a good reason not to make any more practice cakes!
It's really been fun doing this though, I had no idea all the things you can do with sugar before I got elected to do this in Feb. My favorite has to be the gumpaste though....I just love working with it. I just need to hide them from my family!
Thanks again everyone, I really appreciate all the comments and input. I hope I answered all the questions.
((thanks))) Daughter and fiance came last night to see this and now want THIS cake for the wedding. Not sure I can pull that off as we would have to carry it down two flights of stairs and through the yard!! Actually it wouldn't be us doing it, it would be my friends who are going to set the food up in the tent while we are having our photo's taken. I will talk with them and see if they are comfortable with it or not.
If traveling any distance in the car or flights of stairs I would definitely package each layer seperately. Then once at the table it is to be set up on set the top tier on the pillars (glasses) that are already inserted into the bottom tier. Does this make sense? If not let me know and I will get some photos or a picture for you 
HTH
Leily
Hi Taigen - I am CRAZY IN LOVE with this cake! It's gorgeous and no wonder your daughter just has to have it!
SO how did you attach the dowels to the bottoms of the glasses?
The dowels were hot glued to the bottom of the glasses then wrapped with florist tape. The glue will come right off when pulled with a good tug so you could use your own special glasses and not worry about them being damaged. The ones I used are just dollar store ones but were a good size for what I needed.
Glad you liked the cake, I was pretty pleased with it but there are a few things I would do a we bit differently next time. We are still working on how and who would carry it out to the food tent. Everyone is saying "not me" hahaha Hopefully someone will!!
Thank you so much everyone The butterflies are made of gumpaste. I just drew a picture on cardstock, layed it on the gumpaste and used a sharp knife to cut it out. I used a clean (went through the dishwasher) hole punch to make the little round holes. Then I used cardstock folded to let them dry and form. Then they were attached to the popsicle stick with royal frosting. I also piped the body on. Oh and the attenea are done in two ways. I used gumpaste for one set and used royal for the other. I wanted to see which was easier and looked better.
By the way all the stamens (sp?) in the flowers are whole wheat spagetti. Again I tried two methods, one cooked and one not. The cooked method is much better except next time I would cook it with food colouring. The cooked spagetti is far stronger than none cooked. I let it dry out on wax paper and just curled it etc. as it dried. I put a dab of frosting in the flower and inserted the curled spagetti. Then use whatever round tip will fit over the spagetti to pipe the little blob. I used whole wheat because it has a mottled look to it.
Hope that helps. And thanks again so much for all the encouraging comments.
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