YIKES!
OK, so I'm all set t make my sister's birthday cake for this weekend. The party is on Saturday evening. Her favorite cake is white cake. No problem - I got a doctored recipe that looks worthy. She also doesn't really like butter cream frosting. That's OK, I've been looking for an excuse to make and try the stabilzed whipped cream. I'm still doing good.
I decided to make a "stacked gift" cake becuase I've also really been wanting an excuse to make a MMF loop bow.
I went home last night to bake the cakes, thinking I had 10" & 6" square pans. When I pull the pans out, I realized that they were 12" & 8". Sure, I could still do a stacked gift with these, but that would be WAY too much cake, as my BIL is estimating about 35 people at the party. Plus, it took more cake mix than I had planned for, since I had bigger pans.
Still not getting upset, I decided I could just make a single present (instead of the cute stack) out of a double-layer 12" square. No problem.
I started making the MMF. Since it was my first try, I made the small batch. No matter how much sugar I added, it was constantly sticky. I'm not sure I have enough the make a bow, AND I couldn't get the color right. I wanted a pretty levendar and ended up with something purpley and gray-ish - not so appetizing looking.
On top of it all, I REALLY want this cake to look good becuase my sister's friends are the ones with disposable income who will buy cakes from me later. If this cake looks like a disaster, then that won't happen.
What I have at this point is two layers of a 12" swuare in white cake. And I need to decorate with the whipped cream icing.
Agh... I'm going crazy racking my brain trying to come up with a new plan. I'm supposed to be at work, doing the work I get paid for, but right now my brain is all cake and icing!
ANY SUGGESTIONS? Really, at this point, anything is apprecatied...
Okay, well the MMF is really sticky and I ended up adding probably another 1/3 cup of powered sugar to mine but then it was fine....another option would be to go and purchase already colored fondant and make your bow. as far as other ideas, check out the gallery, they have tons of ideas in there and something make spark your thoughts for something different.......don't panic, it will turn out great!!
Chris
I don't know if this will help you but I made a cake last weekend that looked like stacked presents. I made the bow out of gumpaste. I would say if you made the bow tonight it may actually harden enough for your party tomorrow night.
I got the directions off of this site under "how to make a fondant bow".
I posted a picture last Sunday of the cake if you want to check it out.
Jennz
Jen,
I swa youe cake when you posted it and LOVED the way your bow turned out!
I read the directions for it on this site and have been wanting to try a bow like that for a while, but haven't had an excuse.
I've never worked with gumpaste. (though I'm supposed to start a gumpaste flower class next week!) Is it difficult?
At this point, I'm thinking of buying the Wilton pre-made fondant. I don't like the taste, but if it comes pre-colored, then that's one less thing I'll need to worry about.
I'm also thinking of making another cake so that I can stack them after all. I mean, sure, the finshed product will be bigger than I origianlly planned for.
But when has TOO MUCH CAKE ever been a problem?
(And no, my hips are NOT allowed to answer that question!) 
Gumpaste is just like fondant except it dries a little harder so the ribbon seems to keep it's shape better.
Wilton makes a can of gumpaste that you just add water to...very very easy. And then you can just add a touch of color paste to it and knead it in.
I got some help from another caker on Wilton and it was so easy...
I would go with the premade fondant. It's not much to taste awful (not like you're covering the entire cake) and will guarantee you good results.
I didn't know how well the fondant would do on a whipped cream cake. Whipped cream has to be refrigerated, and fondant is not supposed to be (although I have).
I would do a stacked cake and just do the ribbon around both of the layers with a big bow on top. You could ice the layers slightly different colors so they stand apart a bit.
Good luck!
ElleC
UPDATE:
Well, everyone at the party raved about the cake!
Very few of them knew about the mental break down I almost suffered trying to get this thing together. 
Friday night I bought the premade Wilton fondant, the pastel multi-colors pack. I rolled out all the green and made a bunch of loops for the big bow. I combined the blue and pink for a purple and cut some flowers out of that as well as some lettering.
Saturday I tried to make the stabilized whipped cream. I'm not really sure why it's called stabilized, because it was kind of like trying to ice a cake with soup. OK, well maybe it wasn't WUITE that running, but it wasn't as "stable" as I was expecting.
I know that the whipped icing needs to be refrigerated and the fondant is NOT supposed to be, so the plan was to ice everything and stick the cake in the fridge and then just add the fondant on top right before I left the house.
Well, I started to stack the cake and once again reaffirm that math is not my forte. I thought a 12" square cake would fit on a 16" round base with plenty of room to spare. I mean, that's a difference of 4 inched, right? WRONG! 
I have to cut my 12" square down to 10". I contemplated cutting my 8" square to 6", but then decided to leave it.
So I get the soup, I mean icing on the cakes and put them back in the fridge. Then I start to assemble my large bow. I CAREFULLY got all the loops off the rod they were drying on, which was a feat, since I didn't take into account that the rod was large on the ends. Oops. Then, as I was gluing/icing all the loops together into the large bow, EVERY loop I attached to my bow broke out at the end where the fondant makes the curve. As I'm standing over the riuns of what was supposed to be my masterpiece, trying to figure out where to go from here, a friend calls to say she's getting balloons for the party and wants to know what color the cake will be so that she can coordinate the colors. Are you freakin' kidding me? 
Calmly, I realize that I haven't yet used to yellow fondant. Lavendar and yellow it is!
Unfortunately, I's used some of the yellow the previous night to make little flowers to put in my gorgeous big green bow. So at this point, I don't have enough fondant or TIME left to even attempt a large yellow bow. I ended up making the fondant bow from course III (the one with just two loops) in yellow for the top tier over a paler yellow base icing. The bottom tier was lavendar flowers over a white base and the tier weren't set directly on top of each other.
I was never really satisfied with the way the icing was still looking runny along the botton of the tiers, but finally decided that I just needed to just up, get to the party and have a beer or three.
The cake survuved the trip. I got the cake out of my trunk and took it into the var where we were having the party and set it down on the table. As I back away, I noticed a large, lovely smear of whipped cream icing on my jacket. Oh yeah, I'd taken off a corner of the icing that was such a pain to put on the cake in the first place.
After I finished half of my first beer, I kind of smooshed the icing around a bit. I made sure I set the messed up corner so that it faced me and I don't think most people noticed.
I got a lot of compliments and the cake/icing combo tasted AMAZING, if I do say so myself!
All in all, if this had been my first cake ever, I'm not sure there would be a second! I might try fondant again sometime, but not any time soon and not when I'm under a deadline.
Ohh... I used the bride's white cake from the cake mix doctor (someone from this site shared the recipe with me). I did NOT use whole eggs, which has been discussed in some of the other forums. Instead of three whole eggs, I used four egg whites. It was very moist. And I put bavarian creme between the layers.
In the stabilized whippe cream, instead of using vanilla extract, I used a creme bouquet flavoring that I found at my cake supply store. The taste was melt in your mouth fantastic.
Hmm... now that I', thinking about it, I wonder if the difference between the creme bouquet flavoring and the vanilla is what caused my icing to not be as stable as I expected....
Guess I'll have to try again. And no, I don't have any photos. I realized right before we were about the cut the cake that no one had a camera. And before I left my house, I wasn't in any state of mind to remember it! 
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