Okay, so I have a bride that I'm working with now. We're trying to finalize the design of her cake.

It started off that she wanted something she had seen in a Martha Stewart Weddings magazine. It was a simple pink cake but it had chocolate dipped cookies all around the perimeter. First she wanted the cookies, then she changed those to truffles. Now I just talked to her last night and she mentioned chocolate shavings instead.

So here are all of the elements that I need to work in: The colors pink and brown (the brown will be whatever chocolate thing I pick) and also orange-which she requested be worked in through the use of kumquats and then also some white flowers, probably roses.

WOW! I thought about chocolate shavings on the very top tier surrounding her topper which will be a single letter monogram. Then a separation between the top and middle tiers where I could put the roses. (If I do that I need help figuring out how you guys do those cakes with the flowers between the tiers!). A chocolate bead border somewhere, maybe at the bottom of the middle tier....And I mentioned to her using sugared kumquats but where would they go? Then I thought about doing somekind of cutout border at the bottom with chocolate fondant...

Sorry so long but I don't know which way to go on this one! Help please!

Hey Raegan - fellow Richmonder, Happ Belated Birthday girl (your's was the 16th, mine was the 15th). I was thinking that maybe you could put the Kumquats on skewers and mix then in with the white roses between the tiers. That could work and I think the white roses with their green leaves would look nice against the orange of the kumquats. I can't quite envision that entire color scheme though!

Happy belated birthday to you too!! Geminis rock! Usually that's what helps me with my creativity but I'm at a bit of a loss this go around.

Hey! Did you ever get your club off the ground? I'm still interested whenever you do!

That is a really good idea! I could mix them in with the flowers. But should I do that between all the tiers? Just one? And how do I do that anyway? Use those invisible pillars?

Still have to figure a way to get the chocolate in there.

This one's a toughie!

I wish I had some suggestions for you, but please promise you'll post a picture of that cake when it's done! I'm so curious now as to what you'll come up with. I hope your client settles on something... that can be very stressful when they can't make up their mind.

~Wendy

No, no cake club yet. Maybe when I retire early next year. I'll keep you posted. That cake is a design mind-boggler. Let me give it a little thought and respond in a little while (I'm at work and supposed to be doing company work. )

Hahaaha, yes I will definitely let you guys know what I come up with. I hate it when they say "I don't really care as long as it has x, y, z." They do care!!

I'm going to try to sketch out a few things. This will be interesting!

To put the flowers use a couple of smooth edge plates, smaller than the upper tier and between them use floral foam (for fresh flowers) soaked in water and wrapped with plastic wrap.
HTH

Yes that helps alot! So I don't need pillars? I can just set the plate on top of the foam?

You don't, but you should dowel your cake (obvously) and if you feel the top tier is too heavy for the floral foam you can idowel it too, just do it toward the center and keep the flower stubs 1" long max.

This likely doesn't help you but I have my share of strange requests and hard to do color combos...they always turned out WAY better than I thought. Have fun!

This likely doesn't help you but I have my share of strange requests and hard to do color combos...they always turned out WAY better than I thought. Have fun!

Love the pink and brown combo. I also agree with interspersing the cumquats with the white roses between the layers, I think that'll look pretty. I love the look of chocolate ganache drizzled over pink frosted cake.

Good luck on this design, it sounds lovely so far.

Raegan, maybe you could tie the orange color together with the pink and brown by interspersing it around the bottom border too. Like, if you go with a bead border, you could use an orange bead every so often, or if you put chocolate curls around the bottom, you could put a sugared kumquat every so often in the curls? Just a thought.

I don't know why I wasn't getting notifications guys! Thanks for all of the advice. This is what we settled on:

The cake will be pale pink. At the bottom of each tier will be a wide chocolate brown ribbon with a very thin orange ribbon on top of that. Then between each tier will be the white flowers and kumquats mixed. Then on top, the chocolate shavings and the mongram letter.

I still feel like I need to incorporate more actual chocolate somewhere also though.

i think thats perfect. it doesnt need more choc... sound like its going to be awesome

sounds amazing! i agree, i don't think it needs anything else. can't wait to see the pic!

Maybe some truffles around the bottom of a tier, or on top with the monogram?

She did originally say that she wanted chocolate truffles. Then she changed to chocolate shavings. I bet I could probably work in a few!

Okay, the time has come to make this cake. I'm still not too sure about the construction to include the fresh flowers. Help!

wilton has a wedding cake set up that seperates the tiers. It is just foam disks with ribbon on them. I used it on my sons wedding cake and put the roses between the tiers, hope this helps. don't worry I'm sure it will be beautiful.

She specifically said that she doesn't want to see any columns or plates. Yikes! I'm getting a little nervous. The cake itself is pretty simple but the construction is scaring me.

What kind of supports do you have? I did a cake in my photos with flowers between and you can't see the plates. I used foam core and covered them, they were just a tiny bit bigger than the cake, just enough room to put the pearl border on. I use the sfs and got the long legs (5 1/2") so the cakes were about 2 inches above the cake. The legs are only the size of a pencil so they are easy to hide and because the legs screw on I had another 1/2 in more. Hope this makes sense.

Well I don't have any SFS or SPS and I doubt I can get it before this weekend, no one in the area sells them. So I'm going to have to end up getting some Wilton products.

The kit I used was the tailored tiers display from wilton. The plate are not attached to the foam separators they just have little spikes that bite down into the foam. Maybe you could use cake boards or fiber foam boards cut down to the same size as the cake and put a short dowel through the board and into the separator. If you are using fondant on the cake you could even cover the boards with fondant so they would be less visable. If any of this make sense, I can see it in my head anyway

Well I ended up getting plates and those larger plastic dowels made by Wilton....however, I have gotten a reprieve, as it were, from the bride! So I don't have to deal with this, at least not right now.

She's doing her own flowers and ordered extra for the cake but didn't get them. So I don't even have enough flowers to get the look she was going for. So we're just going to do little bunches of roses, hydrangea and kumquats here and there on the cake. I think that'll still be pretty. We'll see. I'll be sure to post a picture.

Thanks for everyone's help! Wish me luck!

best way i seperate cakes with flowers between is by using fake cake rounds (styrofoam cakes rounds) and inserting the stems into them then you stack like an extra tier and can asselmble before deliveery (I prefer to transport my cakes assembled thus detesting colum tiers luckily they are rare in australia ) i do quite a few of cakes like this and it wrks great is even better when my florist does the work for me (she is an angel and is now used to this method) and is great for the caterers when they go to cut the cake as they just lift the styrofoam flower section straight off.
as for design i was thinking you could work in the fruit as a divider also like the roses you can use the styrofoam to attach fruit i have done it with limes. with tooth picks attach the whole fruit to the styrofoam then when you stack it looks like the cake is being held up by the fruit -you could do a layer of roses a layer of (was it kumquats?) then another layer of roses or something then you just need to introduce the truffles and chocolate thems to the 'actual' cake?? just a thought

You konw adatay, why didn't I think of that?! I bought styrofoam but I was thinking I would still need to put the dowels through them so that they would be secure. But cakes dummies are perfect because I wouldn't have to do anything to them. With the floral ones, I would've had to glue them together, etc. Good idea!

i know it worksbrilliantly and is so ridiculously easy!! my florist loves me now (i swear she used to hide before i came up with this theory!!!) now i am the dummy cake queen I use them for everything including brides that want a massive cake but only have a small wedding etc i have a wedding comming up that is a five tier cake bu tthe only actual cake is the top 8" tier that is for keepsake as they already have a desert and makes my life so easy as i can start it whenever i feel like it!!! the bottom tier of my pic the 'tea party' madhatter is a fake. and i just located a supplier that stocks 3" high cake dummies (i used to only be able to get 2.5" so they were not exactly right but now i am laughing

That's great! This morning on my way to work I was actually thinking about cake dummies, how crazy is that?! I was thinking that I could use one to help transport my cake. I could get it bigger than the bottom tier, dowel all the way through and then put it in a box. I think that's a good strategy for keeping it safe. I've never had to transport a cake this far, it's about 2.5 hours away, yikes.