everytime i make a multiple layer cake i get these bulging air bubbles! its only on the cakes that have layers. i crumb coat refridgerate and then frost and decorate. when i'm almost finished i'll see a huge bulge on the side or even coming directly up from the top! what is going on! please please help! i have 3 more of these to do and i don't want to mess them up! :/

How long do you let your cakes settle between crumbcoating & icing? That could be one possibility. Another could be condensation is happening between the cake & icing. Someone else may have another suggestion

well i don't know what you mean by settle but i usually fill, crumb coat then refridgerate overnight before i decorate. do they need to come to room temp before i decorate?

I always get air bubbles if I try and ice a cake that is not completely at room temp .. or if the cake has too much surface moisture. I think if you refrigerate, you have to refrigerate through the whole process and keep refrigerated until delivery. Once that cake comes to room temp, I'd bet there would be air bubbles.

ditto above post

Unless you are using a filling that requires refrigeration I would not refrigerate it just loosely cover it and let it sit. If you feel like you need to put it in the fridge let it come to room temp before icing it. That is what works for me. Good luck!

totally agree about the refrigeration thing

ditto above two!

One thing you might consider is put a cookie sheet on top of the cake & a can or something as a weight I personally will let my layers air "dry" for about 30 min then pipe them dam, put a piece of wax paper on that dam with a flat pan on top of that & gently press down. then I fill it, put the next layer on top of that, put the wax paper, pan & press down on that layer. Then I crumb coat & let settle over night or for a few hours at least.

I've worked in over half dozen commercial bakeries. I've had tons of completely room temperature and never chilled dry surfaced cakes get bubbles so those conditions might produce more bubbles for some of us but we still got 'em on never chilled dry surfaced cakes.

I know these facts seem to disturb some of us but that doesn't make them irrelevant.

What we did to ensure this did not happen to our cakes was make sure there was a hole in each layer of each tier all the way through the icing to the cake--we used a hat pin after decorating -- put it within the decor as best as possible or put them in the back.--made sure the holes stayed open--worked 99% of the time for us.

The places I worked in did not add the step and take the time to burp their cakes like some of us can.

Another cake bubble thought for you.

I"m confused ... are you getting bulges at the sides where the filling is or are you getting air bubbles in the icing on random places all over the cake? These are two different problems.

I also dont' refrigerate my cakes.

This happens to me too!!! ALL THE TIME! I get random bulges that if i don;t pop them and keep a hole open till delivery the bubble just keeps growing!! Where the heck is the air coming from?
I'm so discouraged that now I just keep random little decorations made so i can cover the hole that I know I'll be making

I must say that I refrigerate the frosted cake, and then inmediately after I take it out of the fridge i cover it with fondant. After the cake is covered with fondant stays at room temperature. Is that my problem?

Just a question, because I'm not really sure. But does the "spongyness" of the cake have anything to do with it. I know some say that if you use all-purpose flour it will make a cake, for lack of a better term "more holy" then a cake made from cake flour. Would this extra spongyness increase the air pockets in the cake, thereby, increasing your risk of air bubbles being formed when the extra weight of the icing or fondant is added. I hope that made sense.

I am battling the same problem - it is such an unpredictable outcome that it takes away some of the pleasure of decorating cakes! Each time I cover a cake and DON'T get an air bulge I feel so successful and am convinced that whatever I did, I have now moved past the problem....then, it will happen on the next cake I make! I have a two-tier cake I am working on now that I filled, iced and covered in marzipan first before the fondant as I was convinced that this is what makes all the difference....and I have an air bulge in the side of my larger tier....OMG! On top of lack of sleep cause I work all day and decorate at night, it pushes me right over the edge. For all you decorators who are giving advice here, are you saying that you don't get air bulges??? I would soooo love to find the answer to this problem, cause it isn't always an option to be able to cover up the problem...I have had to actually cut through the fondant and remove some and smooth the edges of the cut back together to reduce the expansion of the fondant that was caused by the bulge, in order to fix it....and then disguise it with decorations. But this isn't the answer! I WANT perfectly smooth cakes like I see from all you experts and in so many of the pictures posted here..it isn't enough to be able to dress the cake up nicely, I want a near perfect foundation too, especially for cakes that are minimal in design and soooo elegant.

I get these air bubbles more often when I tend to make cakes with fruit fillings....berries or lemon as this produces a type of acid. When the fondant is laid over the cake it is trapped inside and starts bulging.

I've had big bulges on the sides of two cakes hours after putting fondant on. They were both my sour cherry cake and I can't be sure they were completely at room temp. However, I've put fondant on other cool (not cold) cakes and not had the problem so I've decided my sour cherry cake is just not compatible with fondant.

I also get them all the time and it drives me crazy! Once they form, the BC around them cracks and can really mess up a great looking cake. Most of the cakes I make are covered in BC and I do refrigerate mine over night after baking because I think they are a bit easier to handle but did not realize that I should be letting them set for a good period of time after crumb coating, before applying the final icing. I usually crumb coat and put them back into the refrigerator for about 30 min. and then ice. I did see on a cake program once where they used a syringe needle to pull the air out of bubbles that have formed under fondant. I tried this once and it did work. Unfortunately this would not work for BC.

I just asked this same question in another thread. First I never had this when using Wilton's fondant but it has its own problems and that is why I switched to a MMF. I really like to texture and workability with the MMF but I now deal with these bubbles. I have had them on cakes w/out fruit so I don't think that is the problem. I was told that if the cake is not at room temperature that as the cake warms the are changes causing airpockets between the cake and the fondant. I am no good a science but this sound reasonable. I make sure I take time to let my cakes warm up. I too work full time and decorate through the night and understand the level of frustration and the lack of time to correct these problems. Good Luck!

Teri