I need to do a few dummy cakes and I am trying to figure out what to cover the cakes with to make it look like buttercream. I thought royal icing would work well enough but there is no getting that smooth, that I have found. Is there something different I can use? or a trick to getting the royal icing smooth? Sorry I tried doing a few searches to find info on this but I'm not having luck with that either. Many thanks to anyone who can help me!

Seems to me that I remember someone on CC once saying that they used spackling compound (get it in a home improvement store, Walmart, or most hardware or paint stores). You might have to thin it down a little, but I'm sure most hardware store employees could tell you what to use to thin it down.

As for the royal icing, was it real thick? Maybe thin it down some? Are there a lot of air bubbles in it? That would give you a hard time in getting it smooth. Maybe someone else will have an answer for that.

Good luck!

yes spackling from Home Depot works just like buttercream, the lightweight spackling. I use to use it all the time, it even pipes like buttercream. So make sure to not cross contaminate your tips if you are piping with those. I always use fondant anymore, love the look and finish of it. Good luck

I did a huge display of dummy cakes with spackling one time. Just put on thin coats and sand lightly between coats. I would suggest doing this as an outside job when sanding. I have discovered that some spackling has a little gray color to it, so check out and make sure the one you get is white.

The trick with RI I have heard, is to put on thin coats and again sand lightly. It's not a process that is fast to get good results.

I used the wilton b/c in a tub for my dummy cakes, they are in my pics, the only real problem I had was the dummy moving on me, but after I fixed that it went well, crusted up really well. Now if I were to have my dummies on display, I would use spackle or that stuff you can buy from the web that is make for displaying cakes. Its alot like spackle, but I cant rem what its called. Hth.

Why wouldn't you just use BC for the look of BC? That's all I ever used on my dummies. It dried hard as concrete ..... I could pick them up the holding onto the sides of the cake and move them around. They lasted for years (had one for 3 years).

I just slapped the BC right onto the styrofoam ... no saran, no covering of any kind. When it's ready to change, I just ran the spatula under the icing and it popped off in big sheets.

Thanks for all the help! I did go get some spackling and tried that last night. Unfortunately the one I got has that light gray color, so ill probably end up spray painting it lol. when i had my hubby check to make sure it was white, he picked up a different type and checked that instead lol gotta love men.