I decided to do some price checks in my area and mailed a couple of cake decorators with 2 pics of cakes. Explained I wanted a chocolate cake blah,blah and asked what the price would be.
One decorator mailed me back and told me that you
CANNOT DO A 3 TIER CAKE IN SPONGE CAKE AS IT WILL COLAPSE 
she only uses fruit cakes to stack as all other cakes are too soft. If the bride wants a sponge cake it must be on 3 different stands.
And this is a decorator that been in business about 10 years
Guess she's never heard of internal supports 
I was soooo tempted to mail her back and tell her to look at my website, they are ALL sponge cakes
I must admit, i prefer to use fruit cakes for stacking because of the weight and denseness of them, but i still use internal supports even then, but i dont refuse sponge if thats what they want ! . . . perhaps she had a bad experience once and never tried again ?
If you use internal supports it doesn't matter what the cake is. The cakes don't support any weight if you've done it right. All the weight is supported by the dowels/straws. The cake just sits on the plate. Doesn't matter if it's fruit cake, sponge cake, angel food cake or a pile of bananas.
Collette peters I believe it was, when confronted with "can you stack this type of cake?" said something to the affect of "Honey, with plates and dowels you can stack jello if you want"
The type of cake makes NO difference! I've seen cheesecakes stacked (they're dense yes, but very fragile...most would crack apart just inserting dowels), and hey I think if people can manage to get cake mix cakes to stack then you CAN stack just about anything!! I can't even get one frosted without it falling apart lol
Collette peters I believe it was, when confronted with "can you stack this type of cake?" said something to the affect of "Honey, with plates and dowels you can stack jello if you want
The type of cake makes NO difference! I've seen cheesecakes stacked (they're dense yes, but very fragile...most would crack apart just inserting dowels), and hey I think if people can manage to get cake mix cakes to stack then you CAN stack just about anything!! I can't even get one frosted without it falling apart lol
I love the line by C. Peters. 
I don't understand why people think that cake supports cake Especially someone that has been in business for 10 years 
.
The only support issues I've ever seen are using angel food cake under a fondant cover -- certainly the fondant will be too heavy for that. But it sounds like this poor lost soul has completely missed the point of cake SUPPORT.
If Toba Garret is to be believed, the standard cake in the UK is a fruitcake, covered in rolled out marzipan (almond paste) then covered completely in a type of royal icing which is smoothed to within an inch of its life. From the pictures in her books, they almost look like pastillage covered cakes...razor sharp edges...very elegant.
Wow....I bet that is beautiful! It must be RI with a bit of glycerine added to keep it soft, right? I saw that recipe in a book once. I bet it is beautiful. Are these fruitcakes similar to the type americans get around Christmas time? Most people just through those out...or pick at it out of curiousity, but it seems people here just dont care for it very much.
Here's what she says...
"In America royal icing, though creamy, is considered more of an ornamental icing. Outside the US, most decorated cakes are iced in royal icing. They are rich fruitcakes which first have a layer of marzipan...You can arrest the hard drying by stirring a little glycerine in...will allow it to dry on the outside yet remain soft in the middle..."
From her book, "The Well Decorated Cake" This book is a must-have in my opinion.
http://i48.tinypic.com/308bjpv.jpg[/img]
Look at how sharp those corners come out!
They even ice the cake board with royal icing.
http://i48.tinypic.com/zn3rxz.jpg[/IMG]
The elegant end result...
http://i50.tinypic.com/sb1wkp.jpg[/IMG]
She also has a recipe for fruitcake in the book that looks pretty much like what my idea of an American fruit is. Of course well made fruitcakes are really nothing like the crap that gets passed around the US at Xmas time.
Of course well made fruitcakes are really nothing like the crap that gets passed around the US at Xmas time.
That's true. Rich fruitcakes have nothing to do with the yellow block of crap that people think of in the US.
lol! Ive never seen yellow. Thats a new one to me. Usually brown and slimy-looking. But dry when you bite into it. Weird. I am curious now. I want to try some real fruitcake! Dont have a clue where Id get it here, and Id probably pay a fortune just to try some at a specialty bakery....I doubt there is even a bakery anywhere close to here that makes stuff like that. Lots of hispanic bakeries though. mmmmmm.......
Jamaican fruitcake is soaked in rum, and British fruitcake is soaked in brandy...(or whatever booze is lying around hahaha!)
Here you go on the yellow one:
Ok, nothing against those who love fruitcake but EWWWWW...that looks like nothing I'd want on my birthday or wedding day! I bake sponge and yes, stack it on a weekly basis so I have no idea what that woman is talking about. But I'm not a fruitcake fan, don't like the stuff that gets loaded into them, and really don't like booze in my cakes....shoot, I barely like it in a glass and I usually disguise it with all sorts of other stuff to make it taste good! LOL!
Just my 2 cents...Cat
Here's a photo of the rich fruitcake, so you can see the difference between it and the yellow monstrosity that is the US fruitcake. I personally LOVE rich fruitcake, but I know a lot of Brits who are so sick of it they have no desire to ever eat it again. I make them at Christmas and I have a little group of fruitcake lovers who I give them to. I guess if it's something you rarely have it's a treat, otherwise it's something you have to eat often and it's no good!
That actually looks pretty good. Better than the yellow brick, that's for sure. Green cherries...uuugggghhhhkkkkk. Frightening.
So when you cover it with the marzipan and royal does it make it taste better? Or is that basically for looks? Ive never had marzipan before.....although I have some sitting in my pantry in a can. lol. Maybe I should try it one day.
Im so sorry. This post is getting horribly off topic. Feel free to yell at me at any time.
What was the starting topic agian?
When I make it I don't even bother with the marzipan, I just eat it as is. You bake it and then soak it over a few weeks (at least) with brandy. I have a friend whose mother starts her holiday fruitcakes the year before so that she can feed it over the course of the year and let it mellow out. It's sooooooo good. All you need is a little sliver of it and a cup of tea or coffee. Yum!
OMG it lasts that long? I guess the alcohol keeps it from going bad? Geeze sounds like you could get wasted off that cake. Seriously the way you talk about it makes me want to try it. Too bad, no booze for me for another 6 months! (bun in the oven, lol)
"and hey I think if people can manage to get cake mix cakes to stack then you CAN stack just about anything!! I can't even get one frosted without it falling apart lol "
Why do your boxed cakes fall apart when icing them? That sounds really odd. I ice a lot of box cakes and they ice just like scratch cakes, perfectly smooth. Just wondering how (your method) you ice a cake if you can't get a box mix cake to ice??
I love American Christmastime fruitcake (no rum or brandy, though)! I'm the one that gets the fruitcakes that nobody else will eat. I make a honking big heavy one every Christmas, then I eat it every day for breakfast and lunch until it's gone. All by myself.
I love anchovies, too. I have a theory that people who like fruitcake also like anchovies.
well I see that overnight my post went from a silly decorator to the differences between fruit cakes
The fruit cake you get in South Africa are the same as the UK ones, rich, dark, loads of fruit and brandy, verrrrry yummy (to me). But the trend is changing here, very few brides actually wants fruit cake nowadays, well my customers in any case 
They all want soft sponge cakes in different flavours as their wedding cake.
The whole thing was just very funny to me when she lectured me about not being able to stack sponges, while I've done hundreds (not that she knew) , its like preaching to the choir
There are several decorators I know that wont do sponge cakes as it is very last minute, a fruit cake can be baked and decorated over several weeks, so no last minute rush and late nights, but then they say that, they dont give brides a line about not being able to stack them.
The round fruitcake pictured looks really good....but can it be made without the fruit? Cuz the cake part looks delicious, it's the fruit that weird "candied" fruit that I don't like.
The candied fruit here is so much better than the stuff sold in the states around the holidays. It makes a huge difference. I soak the fruit overnight in brandy so it's nice and plump when I bake. I moved here hating fruitcake (the "yellow" one), but I love a good rich fruit cake.
In response to the OP... do you think this might be a case of "old dog, no new tricks?" I see a lot of decorators here that stick very closely to classic styles and techniques and refuse to try anything new.
I use a Recipe given to me by a farmers wife in South Africa when I lived there. The fruit is boiled with the sugar and orange juice, (supposed to be apricot juice but can't get here in england) every one raves over it. It cuts beautifully for weddings into 1" pieces. I also find that the trend is for sponge cake now, but we Brits must have our Fruit Christmas cake. My pal is still eating hers from last Christmas, and refuses to give anyone a look in.
I buy the local supermarket (Asda Walmart) mixed fruit bag, it has very little candied stuff in.
I also don't like the look of those yellow cakes, with green cherries YUK.
Anyway anyone wants to try the recipe, contact me. You wont be disappointed. Greetings from here to there
egh. i hate fruitcake. its supposed to be "very popular" as a wedding cake here in aust too.. but ive never been to or heard of a wedding that has used it.
my mum loves and adores the stuff. my opa is a pastry chef, so he makes one for her, then she keeps it to have the year after, and eats the one she got the year before... ive never been one for dried fruit though, and im not big on alcohol either.. so that may be my problem..lol
The Australian rich fruitcake is delicious, but I still can`t understand why we are eating that long. For me the cake older than 2 weeks is really OLD, and I will never eat it, no meter what kind of cake is. Fresh cake is healthier.
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