Buttercream crusted and I smoothed it with VIVA. It was looking really good when I put it in the boxes yesterday afternoon but when I pulled them out of the boxes to set up today the buttercream was cracking like crazy. This happened to anyone else?.....I used 1/4 c. butter and 3/4 c crisco to 4 cups powdered sugar, 3tbps water and vanilla just like I always do.

Your cake looks beautiful! You can't tell it's cracked if it is. :/

When I got cracking it was because the cake settled or was in too cold of a fridge. I'm curious where you live also because the environment can really effect the cake and frosting as well.

Your cake looks great! Where is the cracking? My buttercream cracked on me b/c I did not have enough "fat" in the mix. I needed to add more crisco.

Cracking tends to be caused by insufficient support (not enough boards or boards not strong enough). "Crusting too much" tends to result in an elephant skin look.

Was it cracking or elephant skinning? (skinning? is that a word?)

I agree with Indydebi. That is a tiered cake, which is heavy, on what looks like 2 boards? How many boards did you tape together? For tiered cakes I use either thick cake drums or thick foam core board. I never use the individual cake boards, they are just not strong enough IMHO.

it actually cracked....the top 2 tiers are on seperator plates and the bottom was on 3 cardboard cake rounds until I slid it off 2 onto 2 foam core pieces at the venue, but it was cracked before that. I usually use all crisco but wanted that yummy flavor of butter so I just used a small amount, it may be back to all crisco!

Did you carry a 3-tier cake already assembled on the 3 cardboards or did you assemble it on-site? Not sure what you mean by 'when you slide it' onto a foam piece at the venue? Why would you do that? Did you slide the cake itself from the boards to the foam piece? Or did you slide the cake-on-cardboards from one carrier to the foam pieces? why not just put the cake on the foam piece to start with?