Question For All Fondant Cake Artists
Decorating By tiptop57 Updated 20 Jan 2007 , 2:31am by RisqueBusiness
Help! I am submitting a cake piece to an visual arts show. The gallery exhibit will run for a month.
Please tell me how long you have kept a (non-frozen) fondant covered cake (without cutting) before you threw it out.
This cake will not be eaten. I am concerned with physical changes and I just need to know how often I would need to recreate the piece through out the month..........
The longest I've kept one is about a week. After that the cake got moldy but the fondant still looked great. Can you use a cake dummy instead of a real cake? A hotel that I visit every year has had the same fondant wedding "cake" on display near their reception rooms for over a year. I know it's the same one because there is a "patch" in the fondant in the same place. It drives me crazy that use it as symbol of how wonderful their weddings can be! 
Cakerlady was that hotel cake real cake or a dummy?
The whole purpose of the exhibit is to address altered art to include art for the other senses such as smell...... I would prefer using cake and not a dummy............
I am really hoping for at least two weeks from each piece then I would only have to make the piece for a total of three times. Once for the model on the application and two for the actual exhibit.......
Help anyone else?
A "Visual" arts show that is encompassing the other senses? Sounds unusual.
But to answer your question, it also depends on the conditions where the cake is placed, heated, AC, in a glass case, humidity etc. Mine have also only lasted 1 week in the best of conditions. But I've also noticed the only thing you can smell from a fondant covered cake is the sugar, the cake and filling smell couldn't come through, so maybe it wouldnt' matter if it was a dummy? Hate to have the smell they get from your exhibit to be mold.
But even with a dummy I noticed it hardens up and the smell dissapates after a while, but I think it should smell for a month(sorry I can't confirm that). I've had my cake dummy covered in fondant for 10 years.
tiptop:
I finished my wedding cake in Wilton course 3 and wanted my husband to see it (he works away on a boat). I kept that cake on my counter in the kitchen for I know over a week! (It was while the air-conditioner was on). It could have possibly been 2 weeks! Got tired of looking at it 
When he came in, he and his brother wanted to eat it. I kept telling them NO!
They ate it anyway.... yuck! Both said it tasted fine. The top tier did have mold on the bottom and where the dowels were. The bottom tier looked fine - no mold.
Okay gang....thanks for all your input. I really want to make the sculpture in cake and for it to have the rich sugar smell......so looks like I will be making at least two of them. I will post them when the are completed.
BTW, even though it is acceptable in the culinary arts world, I find it so hard to promote myself as a sugar artist if I use Styrofoam in lieu of cake in the visual arts world. 
I don't believe all painters make their own canvas... There is no shame in decorating a dummy - I think that's where the real "artistry" comes in.
Anybody can bake a yummy cake (it's hard to screw up a mix), but the talent lies in what you do with it after it's out of the oven.
Just my $.02...
BrandiBakes I sure do understand where you are coming from and thank you for your feedback. Some of my issue comes in the fact I sculpt a majority of my cakes and most cake shows want real sculpted cakes and not Styrofoam. So I felt that an art show should be similar.
And here is food for thought...the last group art show I entered, I had a conversation with a photographer opening night, she asked me have I ever tried ceramics? 
Of course I then asked her, have you ever tried painting? 
This is why I choose to use real cake.
I have a recipe for something called a Madira (spelling??) cake. It's a very bland cake that my former employer used to make for display cakes. It lasted FOREVER!!!! If you want it, send me a pm and I'll see if I can dig up the recipe.
I agree with melysa you can you use a dummy cake and add flavoring oils to the fondant and icing in order for it to have that buttery smell. Even the wilton butter flavor would do. One cake that definately lasts for months is a fruit cake. You can make a fruit cake, cover it in marzipan and then in fondant... thats the traditional style. Those cakes have a very long shelf life. Just make sure to use royal icing no buttercream.
I did a show cake for RBA that lasted several weeks. I carved the cake and let dry overnight in the sculpted state. I covered it with Royal icing. Being in Dry Minnesota right now the cake would just dry up on the inside. Kim Payne who won the grand prize at OSSAS did the top of her cake in actual cake. We had a talk that it was covered in Royal and it would just dry up!
Most cake shows that I've participated in do not encourage people to submit real decorated cakes, they just want to know that the technique that you use CAN be put on a real cake.
I too will be in an art show Feb 2, I decided that I wasn't going to display a real cake because I don't want to see the mess it makes when you cut into it.
The art show is called EVEDECONSTRUCTED so we will be destroying the piece after the show. We had planned to eat the wedding cake after the show.
So, I'm displaying a "dummy" so I can bring it back to my shop...the "cakes" will be stacked then I'm placing them up on a tier so I can place the cupcakes that I plan to serve at the show so the Tiered cake doesn't look like a cake bomb exploded..lol
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