Hints For Working With Cake Dummies?
Decorating By lehall2006 Updated 17 Jul 2006 , 11:25am by kicky
Hello CC!
I'm in the process of creating a website, and thought I might invest in some cake dummies so I can photograph a variety of designs for my site. Since I've never worked with dummies before, I'm wondering if you all might have some wisdom to share?
Some specific questions:
1. Do you cover your dummies before you work with them? If so, how? With what? Any tricks to this?
2. Is there anything I need to know when working with dummies? Any special techniques?
Thanks for your help!
Lauren
If you plan to do some dummies in fondant it is easier if you sand the top edges with a fine sandpapaer to round them out so the fondant doesn't tear when you put it on.Wet the dummy first with either water....corn syrup and water mixed...or vodka....It acts as a glue to hold the fondant on.Lots of smoothing but it looks great.If you use royla icing just be sure the consistency is right..nothing worse than trying to spread thick icing.
I recently did a 4 tiered cake dummy.
Dallas Foam has great prices...
The cake dummy I made was preped byshaving the edges with a grapefruit knife to keep the fondant from tearing.
I covered the dummies with buttercream and let them dry.
When I went to put the fondant on them I put corn syrup on my hands and rubbed my hands around the sides of the dummies with this, then applied the fondant.
The larger styrofoams were easy, the 6" topper was the most work smoothing!!!
Cake dummies don't have much weight to them, which makes frosting them a little tricky. Put them up on a raised turntable, mine was a Wilton turntable that is about 8 n- 10" above the counter. I have heard of some people weighting the dummies by hollowing out part of the bottom in the middle of the dummies and placing a rock, so that the cake doesnt move so much or need as much special handling and acting more like the weight of frosting a regular real cake.
Mine turned out great the first time and I'm sure yours will also.
If you want mw to send you a picture of the 4 tiered wedding dummy I made for last weekend just send me a message with a way to contact you...
Hi Lauren!
I brushed my styrofoam with piping gel before applying the fondant and it worked great. That was 6 months ago and the cake is still as good as new...in my china cabinet. I have yet to cover one in royal or buttercream, though.
Good luck!
Wanda
Wow, six months -- that's impressive! Thanks for the help!
I have read in other posts to cover the dummies with plastic wrap before frosting...do yall do this?
Patticakes, if you'll pull up the tutorial on how to work with MMF in the articles section, there are some great diagrams on how to cover your dummies with saran wrap. I've got to do this this weekend to get some more things into my portfolio so I'm going to be right there with ya!
I cover all my dummies with plastic wrap. I pull out a long piece and then place the dummy on it's side and roll it up in the plastic wrap. I use lots of tape to pull the plastic wrap tight on the top and bottom and try to get it as flat a possible. Make sure all of the dummy is covered by either plastic wrap or tape. This makes cleap up late soooooo much easier. I've done it before with them not covered and when I went to re-do the dummy, I had to wash it first. It is a pain in the rear to try and wash something that needs to soak, but all it does is float in the sink.
I don't shave the edges of my dummies when I do fonant on them, but if you want to or if you are making a whimsical dummy and need to carve them, DO IT OUTSIDE! It is messy! These dummies are made of thousand of compressed little breads, and when you cut into it, they go flying everywhere. It looked like it had snowed on my porch. (I had to hose it down to get rid of the stuff.)
I use an icer tip to ice them and it is a huge help since they are light weight and like to slide around. I generally ice with buttercream even if I just need a fondant covered dummy, just becasue I think it looks more natural. But I've done the fondant without the buttercream too, though not wraped in plastic wrap as I was affraid the wrinkles would show through.
These are all great tips! I just got all of my dummies from dallas foam and plan on playing this weeked since DH starts school on weekends as of tomorrow, so i will have plenty of ME time
So do you all re-use cake dummies a lot? Or do you keep the designs forever as "display pieces" (obviously not the ones w/ buttercream underneath - just the foam & the fondant)
Also,
Do you ever decorate the dummy, take pics of it, and then take the fondant off and re-use it? Is that possible? If you piped buttercream decorations on it, could you"wipe off" the buttercream and just re-knead the fondant to use again? Does any of that make sense?
No, you can't peel off the fondant and re-use it. Once fondant begins to dry--and it dries pretty quickly. It would be even worse with buttercream residue--the grease in the buttercream breaks down the fondant and you'd have a mess on your hands.
When I do dummy cakes, I round off the top edge by sanding it just a bit. If it has deep imperfections, I sometimes fill those in with royal icing or dampened bits of fondant that I rub in and then let dry well. I dampen the dummy by rubbing it with a wet paper towel and apply the fondant. I keep them until I need the shapes again and then just peel off some and soak off the rest. I have several dummies that are over 1 year old and they look fine--if a bit dusty.
For a buttercream style cake, you can use royal icing with a bit of glucose or light corn syrup added to it to delay the drying time for easier smoothing, etc. You can obviously pip on royal decorations. The pros generally use PermaIce--pretty expensive, but you can actually wash the iced dummy to clean it! From cakeart.com:
1 gallon Permaice. This is the fake icing for fake cakes. Once dry it is washable with a damp cloth and insect proof. Dries in 24 hours. Workable just like buttercream icing. Enough for 6, 8 inch round cakes.
Rae
I have iced a few dummy cakes with buttercream. I don't cover them with plastic wrap, I never could get it to work right. So when I am done, I place the dummy in the sink and pour boiling water over it. The buttercream melts off pretty quickly.
How do yall get the dummies to sit still while icing? I gave up today after fighting with it...
hi i have to go an see someone about a dummie cake in the morning.
Two questions
Do you need to attach the dummy to the board and how do i do this do i just us a bit of icing?
And how do you cost up making a dummie cake conpared to an ordinary cake. Do you charge more than normal?
Nicole
Is it going to be part of a real cake? I usually charge a little less because their was no baking.
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