Doing a wedding cake with BLACK swiss dots, should I use butter cream or royal icing, do you add piping gel to the frosting before? The cake is red velvet with cream cheese filling, fondant covered......need to do the day before and am worried that it A-needs refridgeration, B-Fondant might sweat once taken to reception, and C- as a result of sweating, the dots might melt/slide. ANY/ALL tips would be greatly appreciated!!

Cream cheese filling needs to be refrigerated unless it is the sleeve filling.

You are correct that condensation would be an issue...it will make the black dots bleed into your white covering.

Not sure what the answer is....unless you can finish the cake up to that point and place the dots on the day of the wedding?

that's exactly what i would do too best of luck!!

I'm just curious way you'd design a cake with cream cheese frosting that needs to be refrigerated, decorated with black dots on white icing that is very likely to get damaged if it's refrigerated. One element or the other shouldn't be there.

Here are a couple of options for you.
1. Use chocolate frosting and add black gel color to create black.
2. Add black gel to White Stokes piping gel. If you don't want a translucent look color the piping gel white first and then add the black. This only works with White Stokes brand.

I've used both of these methods and they have worked fine. We refrigerate all of our cakes. Option #2 is my favorite.


Minette

Does it have to be fondant covered? Maybe you can smooth the cream cheese frosting so that it has the look of fondant? Try the viva towel method...it works well for me. Not completely smooth, but once it crusts, you can put the swiss dots on there and refrigerate the whole cake. HTH, I'm not a professional by any means, but it works for me.

Thanks for all the helpful input! This cake is actually for family, which they had a photo of, and is why all their requests will be attempted to be made. If I didn't have to attend the days events I would do the cake the day of, but timing won't permit! I think I'm going to leave the swiss dots off at first, let it sweat it out, then add later....or not. Definitely going to be a learning experience I can tell. Thanks again!!

I will tell you something...I just had a cake in June and made a cake as a gift for my cousin. Bottom tier was white with black scrolls and I didn't have to refrigerate the cake and had it in my mother's very cool air conditioned house...the scrolls STILL bleed

so...whatever everyone else said is true...I dunno. I would probably use royal icing now instead of bc because I think it would hold the color better JMO

Try tinting sugar veil black.

Good idea-totally hadn't thought of that angle.

I am totally worried about the same thing for this weekend. I have to do a white chocolate butter cream iced cake with black piping scrolls on it. I have been trying to figure out all the little hints and techniques to help with the black. It is my first black piping cake. I'm so worried about the bleeding possibility. I think I am going to do the chocolate butter cream tinted black. Good luck!

All 4 show is right - SugarVeil is really tight, and a good non-bleed choice for black dots. And it freezes/refrigerates just fine.

Be sure to color SugarVeil with powdered color when you want black, or any dark or very intense color, then you can 'tweak' it with liquid color. FYI - Any large amount of gel -type color is especially vulnerable to bleeding.

Michele at SugarVeil

I did this white fondant covered cake with black piping and it did not bleed at all. I did not refrigerate it. I used RI and Americolor gel.

For some reason the black dots have paralized my mind...the sugar veil tips seem to be no fail(which I love and need!), after some you tube demos, I am very excited about using this product in the future! I should have raised the distressed flag a bit sooner. I also wish there were a section of all the DON'TS in the buisness-like "don't wait until the week of the cake being due to do something about what you don't know how/what to do!"
Thanks again for the tips,and for posting replies-it's really helped get my mind functioning again! Happy caking!

dholdenrn - beautiful cake!

I have had this happen on my stencils and piping. Red and Black are the worst but it happens even with ivory. I will have to give sugarveil a try. Will it work with stencils?

Hi Jacqui - yes, SugarVeil works with stencils. The only thing to keep in mind is, because SugarVeil is so white-white and it takes much color to make it dark, to be sure to use powdered color for any dark or intense colors so all of SugarVeil's properties are kept intact. Gel or liquid colors work fine for pastel colors of SugarVeil, though. Thank you - Michele at SugarVeil

I've done quite a few black and white cakes this summer, including one I delivered today. It was buttercream with black buttercream piped scrolls. Because of the fillings, it had to be refrigerated. I refrigerate all of my cakes in cardboard boxes because of the tremendous amount of humidity in my commercial refrigerator and I haven't had one problem with bleeding. I've done black royal on white fondant, and still no problem. Maybe keeping in the box helps but I've probably done at least 6 like that this year.

Thanks Tracycakes. For yesterday's cake I completley sealed the box, took my cold cake from the frig. and placed it in the sealed box 2 hours before delivery (delivery was an hour) so it was in the box 3 hours before I took it out at the venue and it did great! I'm hoping this works when the warmer weather comes back next year!