I am making my first wedding cake, and the customer gave me a picture of the cake she wants. to give the cake a "rustic" look the cake is placed on a slab of a tree trunk. i have seen this before, but i can't find anyone that sells these. does anyone know where i can find a slab of tree trunk????

thanks.

Check out this cake. Maybe you could pm lillicakes and see where hers came from.

http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1246126

Here's an interesting thread on this same thing from weeks ago:

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-591793-tree.html+trunk

This is so interesting! I belong to an organization with a custom wood designer / woodworker, and I was telling him of the spike in interest in these kinds of cake stands .... and suggested that he should explore the mfg'r and marketing of these!

Heck I may have to go ahead and order one from him so I can be a step ahead, here! I would ask him to hollow it out from the bottom so it's not as heavy as just a slice of wood from the center of a tree!

What you are looking for is called a "tree cookie." Unfortunately, I am not sure where to get them in other areas. Up here (northern Michigan), the bride and groom that had that wedding cake (avatar) both work for the regional land conservancy, so they had an "in" on sourcing. It might be possible to get one from a sawmill that processes raw lumber. Or maybe a timbering service? Good luck!

They present a little bit of a challenge in use. It is hard to get one that is a uniform thickness; most look pretty straight but when you have to stack a tall cake, "pretty straight" doesn't cut it. I had to do a lot of shimming and ducttape-engineering to get the one in the photo to sit level. Also, they are HEAVY (at least the bigger ones) and present extra challenges in cake moving. On that cake, I transported the bopttome 16 inch layer on the tree cookie and the total must have been 75 pounds.