Hello there,

I want to make my mom a Macy's shopping bag cake next weekend for her B-day. I think I will cut a sheet cake and stack the layers to make the bag. But when it comes to the fondant on the sides of the bag, won't it sag down and fall? How do you get it to stand up?

And won't the cake tip over?

Thanks for any advice.

You have to use dowels in that cake to support it. I've done a diaper bag, pics in gallery, (kinda similar) and used seperate pieces of fondant to do the sides. HTH!

I have a shopping bag cake in my photos...I made sheets of fondant and dried them for about a week...then put them on the cake and sealed the sides in royal icing, then airbrushed. That way you have nice flat sides.

I dowel & stack the cake, then give it a good coating of buttercream. I place it on it's final cake board, adding 2 full length sharpened dowels to anchor it to the board.

I knead some tylose into my fondant and then roll out panels 1/4 inch thick that I cut to size. I place each panel backside up on a clear flexible chopping board with the bottom edge of each panel right at the bottom edge of the cutting board.

I let the panels sit only as long as it takes me to add a thin coat of fresh butter cream to the back of it to act as glue.

I line up the panel with the cake side--I do the skinny ends first--and gently press it on using my hand over the cutting board. I remove the cutting board & use my fondant smoother to finesse it. On those end panels, I use a gum paste tool to make a center crease and the ^ at the bottom.

After all 4 panels are on, I clean up the seams with same color buttercream or royal.

The fondant is firm, but not hard, and can be cut for serving, if necessary.

HTH
Rae

Thank you for the advice everyone!