I have a client that wants a marble cake and whipped topping for her baby shower cake. I have never actually decorated with whipped topping and was hoping that I could get some help from the pros on what to expect. By the way she wants a baseball (Houston Astros "old school" colors) cake. You should also know the cake is for the 1st week of August in Houston, Texas (may I say, "extreme humidity"). I am totally stumped, since all I have really used in the past is fondant and BC. Please help!!!!

Whipped topping is not going to stand up to heavy decorating. You cant cover it in fondant. Its very light and soft to work with. If I ice a cake in WT I do the details in buttercream. There are some WT mixes, so I hear, that dont have to be refriderated. The kind I have always used does. I have used a recipe for wilton's stabilized whipped cream frosting and it was ok. Soft, but it worked. I think I actually like the taste of whipped topping as opposed to whipped cream. I have to make it for my son's b-day and I am going to try to find a way to combine both cream and WT mix, just for taste purposes. If you want the wilton recipe Ill post it for you. Someone else with more experience in making there own might have a better recipe though. I dont make much myself. I use a commercial WT mix at work.

Oh and Ive had problems with colors from BC bleeding into it, so I wouldnt use dark colors for the accents. Maybe its just because I am a little unexperinced with home-made WT, but it seems to me like your design capabilities with it would be pretty limited. Good luck hon.

Well here it goes..... If you are going to use whipped topping this is the way to go. Make it like chantily cream but witha stablizer that will be the only way. And what I mean by that is : Heavy whipping cream, powder sugar and vanilla to taste, And whipped cream stabilizer( which is a powder). Whip up only half way seperate it to different bowls for the colors and add the colors and finish whipping till it reaches a firm peak. You can do this to each color with out the cream falling because of the stablizer. Then you can decorate the cake all with whipped cream and you dont have to worry about the butter cream bleading all over. The only thing is it will not hold up in the heat, neither will Buttercream. Good Luck and I hope this helps.

The WT I use is Pastry Pride, the taste is wonderful and if you beat it stiff it can stand some hours out of the fridge, the bad news is that it won't take colors very well, no matter how much food coloring you use it'll look like pastel colors (great for baby shower cakes but that's it) I always frost in white and airbrush it. If you can get Rich's whipped topping you are going to have the same problem with the colors but it doesn't need refrigeration. Now, I have to tell you if the shape of your cake is a sphere or half a ball "it's going to be a pain in the a.... to frost" because it's not easy to smooth.

Also with whipped topping icing like Bettercream the icing starts getting airy and more difficult to work with the longer it sits.

You can combat this by keeping some liquid Bettercream to fold into the icing when it starts breaking down.

When I need to write with it I add corn syrup and it makes it really nice to work with.

Here is a cake I did with Bettercream icing not too long ago. You can add fondant accents to the cake with no issues. The baseball is half a styrofoam ball covered in fondant.

http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1391629&done=1