Hello you all! Well I did a photocake...I got the image from the local Walmart. They said all they had was the rice paper. After I got it on the cake it looked just great!
But after about 10 mins small tiny bubbles began popping up all over the photo area.
Does anybody know what may have caused this? and how to correct it? Did I do something wrong? Is it the paper?
This was sort of a "trial run" as per the photo cake to iron out any possible bugs and disasters!
I have to do a photo cake for my mom's upcoming meeting and I do not want it to bubble up.
Any thoughts/advice/help is greatly needed and appreciated! Thanks so much!
Awnee

here's a bump for you.
I am going to be doing one soon and would like to know too before it happens.

Did you let the icing crust before you put the picture on the cake. I have not used the photos, but have painted pictures on the rice paper and put it on a cake. I always let my icing crust.

it just means that there were air bubbles underneath your photo, you need to make sure that you smooth it out really well and get all of those air bubbles out. I usually start on one end and then smooth and lay down the rest of the photo as I smooth.

I would say its moisture from the cake messing with the rice paper, as that is NOT the usual medium for an edible image. Not saying it won't work ever - but look what happened to you. Make sure you take the next one to a store that has the frosting sheets (around here its the safeway and fred meyer) and you should have no problems.

I just did a rice paper photo cake Friday. The place I bought it from said not to have the buttercream crusted but fresh. I had little bubbles too but nothing that really interfered with the looks of it that much.
I did notice some swirls on his cheek towards her chin. I think it may have been me smoothing it with my fingers but not sure. Everyone loved it.
Susie

Rice paper is commonly used here for edible photos. You want the icing fresh and if the photo is large, place the center on first and let it settle on the cake from the middle out. I've used them with success. I've had the frosting crust, then I "painted" the back of the rice paper photo with karo syrup and then applied it. I haven't had any problems, except you can't cut thru the darn things like the frosting sheets.

I've never used rice paper before. But with the regular edible image paper, I was told to freeze it first for about a minute. It makes it easy to peel off the backing paper and also makes it firm enough to really smooth out without tearing it.

I've only done one edible image cake and it came out cool. Not happy with the depth of color of those images, but it's what the customer wants!!

Um . . . frosting sheets are made of . . . well, frosting.

Made commercially and rolled uber thin.

BC frosting? Or fondant or something else?

I checked a couple of websites to see if they listed ingredients and couldn't find a list. It's some kind of stabilized bc. Definitely not fondant and definitely not anything you could DIY.

Thanks! I was just curious. I didn't realize there was a difference but I have never used them!

Wow! Thanks so much for all the replies!

My cake did NOT crust and I do not know why. I used the basic buttercream recipe with the crisco with 0 trans fat and regular milk but it still did not crust. I waited 2 hours and it was still soft.

What do I need to do to make it crust? More maringe powder? More milk? Add dream whip and if so how much? More 10xxx?

Is there a fool-proof icing recipe that will crust, and where do I find it?

I have bought some frosting sheets from kopykake and next time I will take the sheet to them to use, (unless I decide to get an Epson C88+ and do them myself!)

And again, many thanks for all your help. Awnee

I use the Viva Papertowel Method recipe:

1 1/2 c. Crisco
1/2 c. soft butter
2 tsp. clear vanilla
2 lbs. sifted powdered sugar
1/3c. water

I use the no trans fat Crisco too and I've never had a problem with this recipe not crusting.