This could get lengthy, I'll try to be brief. My sister's 25th anniversary is in a couple of months - we normally don't "do" gifts, but since this is a "special" one, I wanted to do something. She never had a "real" wedding cake, but I'm definitely not up to that one, lol!, but wanted to do something like that.
After seeing the beautiful mini cakes here on candle stands and then the pretty box that someone (sorry!, can't remember the name) found at Burlington Coat Factory, I decided to do some pretty cupcakes, and a mini cake - decorated "25th anniversary style".
I practiced some yesterday, but the plain truth of it is that I do not enjoy baking cakes - I love to decorate, but the baking and leveling is not my "thing". I didn't have a mini pan set, so I used stainless steel measuring cups. I used the 1 cup for the base, the 1/3 cup for the next tier, and a cupcake for the top tier. My vision was to do teeny tiny roses for the top, with green stems down the side of the cupcake in buttercream, do a fondant ribbon to make it look like a hand-tied bouquet, then decorate the bottom two tiers white with either dots or cornelli lace. The roses and stems looked great, exactly how I'd pictured them - the rest, however was not what I was hoping for.
I'm thinking I will definitely have to buy the pans, (or is there anything else I could use?) but are there any tips that anyone can give me for decorating something so small? It just seemed so awkward.
Also, a ? about buttercream for crumb coat and icing (not decorating) - how much do you thin it? I know I had mine too thick, but I was afraid to go really thin, but maybe that's my problem? And the cake itself, how can I doctor it to make it more dense?
Any tips, tricks and suggestions are most appreciated.
Thanks so much!
Tracey
Do you have any round cookie cutters? Some people make a sheet cake and then cut the rounds of cake out for the little cakes. It works well for making several of the cakes efficiently. Actually, I think making the little cakes is harder than making a normal size cake. But your idea sounds very cute.
I agree with the others. It's more work to do the little cakes. I use the sheet cake method myself with nesting round cutters to get the right sizes. You can crumb coat and maybe use a pourable icing which can be easier but either way, it's work and then you still have to add the detail. A lot of the magazines just use a poured fondant and decorate once it sets. Kinda like a big petit four. I try not to do a stacked on unless they ask me to. But if I must, I do what I'm asked. They aren't cheap because of the labor involved. A local in-store bakery here in FLA charges $20-24 per little cake and they say it feeds like 4 people but the whole idea is it's individual meaning people don't want to share. I think they price it that way because they want to offer it but obviously discourage people from purchasing it because of the work involved by pricing it the way they do. I don't charge nearly as much per cake but it can still be pricy. 
Good luck to you. Practice makes perfect.
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