I have to do a sweet sixteen cake and they want strawberry shortcake. They want a tiered cake serving 75. Here is the address to the website for the design they want...

www.all-party-supplies.com/birthday/E5174

I was thinking of doing angel food cake layered with strawberries. Any ideas would be helpful. The cake will be on display for the whole party til cake time so I need a good strong icing. However they don't want buttercream or fondant.

Thank you

Sara

Sara,
Maybe someone else here can correct me, but I don't think you can make an angel food cake and tier it. I would use a pound cake or the enhanced cake formula on this site with white or french vaniall cake mix- you will get a great cake to go with the strawberries. As far as icing, ganache goes great with strawberries.

I agree with Kerri. I don't think the angel food would hold up. Another icing idea would be crusting cream cheese icing. It tastes good and and you can decorate with it. Good luck!

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake_recipe-2047-Crusting-Cream-Cheese-Icing.html

Crusting cream cheese icing is great!

As far as the angel food cake, I've heard the same thing about it not holding up very well in tiered cakes, but on the other hand, the cake isn't supported by the cake underneath it. It should be resting on a plate and dowels or pillars...I don't know enough to tell you one way or the other on that one, but I don't think I'd chance it (or I'd at least do an experimental cake first).

Sponge cakes would be your best bet. You don't have to use a tube pan or whatever special pan they require. Cake or springform pans work just as well and follow the directions the greasing requirements for the pans. I can't remember off the top of my head, but I don't think you do on sponge cakes.

No buttercreams or fondant, sounds like someone does not like the sugary toppings, lol. I would go then with something whipped, such as the whipped cream icings or the cream cheese (there are some with little to no sugar added) frosting. The Italian Meringue buttercreams (I know, it's a buttercream) are very smooth and not very sweet at all.

Good luck!!!

Thank you all for your advice. It was all so helpful as I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out what to do.

If I was to use ganache for the icing I have need a bit of help. I tried to use it once as a filling and got frustrated. When I made it it was kind of runny. I also was doing everything very last minute and my patience was missing on that day. Would vanilla ganache taste good and more like a strawberry shortcake type of cake?

Thank you again

Sara

The White Butter cake recipe from the whimsical bakehouse is very much like angel food cake. so much that I stopped using it. It was so stiff It made the filling squish when slicing. But it's very very tasty. very like angel food. very easy to torte and stack.

If a whipped cream type icing is really what they want, they should understand it would make it hard to decorate like the pic. Ask them what they really oppose in a buttercream icing. If they just don't like the gritty and greasy bakery type icing that is very sweet, Use a whipped icing or IMBC (my fave). I got a packaged mix (powder)from my local cake supply store that was really nice.

Sounds like a really fun cake project otherwise