I have my first wedding cake due today. I made the cakes earlier this week, filled and let them settle, crumb coated and covered in fondant. LEt me first say that I have read manyy posts on here that have said to make sure that the fondant is not dried out. Shortning was used in "en grand masse." When I went to stack my cakes and was completely done, it looked good. I got up this morning and all of my fondant is cracked, one cake completely buckled, yes, I had plenty of wooden dowels in all of the cakes, it's a 4 tier cake , 12, 10, 8, 6. I am completely mortified. I don not have enough fondant to fix this. HELP!!!!!!! I have to deliver this cake in 3 hours.

Can you pipe decorations over the cracks???
Like cornelli lace or something???

Perhaps what happened is that the fondant was all set up and dried on the individual cakes and the stacking and the weight of the cake brought too much weight to bear on it and it succumbed to the pressure is my guess.

What kind of cake, icing and filling is it?

I'll tell yah what I did once and I'm not proud of it but I dd it. I wrapped each tier in scrunched up netting, tulle. I won't go into all the drama why it happened but it happened and we all survived and there was enough decor made in advance to 'cover' for the 'special covering'. so it looked like a grand cake--and I've seen cakes like that too--but it was not plan A.

With fondant cakes, your supports need to be ever so slightly *above* the surface. So, now for a fix. Dissolve some of the fondant into some water and make a slurry-paste. Using a sharp thin knife or exacto, spackle the slurry-paste into the cracks. If you are careful the cracks will disappear.

i am a newbie, LOVE LOVE LOVE forums on this site... very very useful for me... I LEARN A LOT... thank u ALL... Y'all great cake decorator!!

Thank you for eveyone's advice. You guys rock.
I could not do the cornelli lace the bride was specific in what she wanted and that was one of the things. My dowels were slightly higher, obviously not high enough. I did make that fondant slurry and it did work. The cake is delivered and the bride loved it. Whew!!!! I am exhausted. Many lessons learned.

I forgot to say about the fillings. I had Raspberry cream in 2 of the tiers and Chocolate Rasperry Ganache on the other 2. My dams, were, good, I thought. No bulging!

Anything that will work on real cake will also work on dummies. I just did a little repair myself.

Yay, Leah!!!

Yay, BeeSweet!!!

Great save!

And they all lived happily ever after!!

I'd had to make many repairs on the fly over the years . . .

This is scary.. its what puts me off making money from cakes! Did you find out why this happened so it can be avoided next time?
Would love to know. Glad it turned out in the end!!