I am new to cake decorating and am loving it. My cakes are always nice and moist and people rave about them, but they tend to fall apart as I am cutting them. I have a wedding coming up in a week and a half and I need to know if I am doing anything wrong. I have been using cake boxes as a base for my friends cakes. (becouse I am not doing this as a bisness and its cheaper for my friends and there wedding cakes when its s simple white or chocolat flavor they want.)
I bake the cakes in the morning and let them cool a good long while. Then in the afternoon or evening I dirty frost and let it crust, and then add my last bit of butter cream of fondant depending on what I am doing. Should I maybe be baking the day before I frost? Or freezing them first? Help please!
To Hamaranpuu.... when I was brand new to baking cakes, I had the same issue with my cakes falling apart and I quickly learned that if I didn't level the cakes that same thing would happen. Are you cutting off the dome part of your cake before icing and stacking? Just a thought....
Hamaranpuu,
I found the same problem with box cakes. For a firmer cake, you might want to try using a box cake mixed and a pound cake mixed, then fold the two batters together. Since you are trying to save $$, What I do to get the moistness and stability, I use a standard scratch wedding cake recipe then add a box cake batter to it for moistness. Good luck.
Thanks I do always level my cakes and I have the basic dirty icing and stacking and everything down pretty good. Its just when I go to cut in to it. I get about a quorter threw a round and then the middle starts to crumble on me. It might help when I cut this wedding cake event style...(I am hoping)
My bride just wants plane or white cake...so I am a bit leery of trying the white almond sour cream. But it sounds good. I will have to try it for my self soon.
Thanks Sweet Granny, I am in a vary vary small area so I don't know if they have a pound cake mix available. I will check it out! Thanks for all the suggestions.
One last thing, when I do my box mixes, I add an extra egg and a box of pudding. I'm wondering if that'll help...?
I have added pudding to a box mix before, it probably would help, but again I would have to use vanilla and this bride wants JUST WHITE CAKE. She was pretty firm on that. Her mom even asked her a few times if she wasn't meaning vanilla, and she said "No, just pain white, plain white Mom!" (and no she is not a bridzila) So I am afraid the pudding might add a bit to much vanilla flavor for her.
Again thank you everyone for the suggestions. I will have to see if I can play around in my kitchen and come up with something.
An after thought...I do NOT own a stand mixer, could this be part of my problem. I have to hand mix things with an old fasion wisk when they get to a certin volume becuse my little hand mixer isn't powerful enough. Last wedding I did I burnt out a motor and had to buy a new one, and that was just a dubble batch of Butter Cream.
Ok so here is what a chef taught me.
Add either a cup of sour cream or mayo to the recipe for moistness. Now I have tried both and will tell you the sour cream makes it firmer than the mayo.
I can't taste either one unless its chocolate and then it only makes my chocolate more delicious when I use they mayo.
As for firming it up I do box mixes doctored with 4 eggs per box. See if that helps.
Maybe test the recipes with a bit of extra flour in them? I only just found out that the difference between an English Victoria sponge cake (equal amounts of butter, sugar,eggs and flour) and Maderia (think you guys call it pound cake, its a bit denser than a victoria sponge but tastes similar) is just the same ingredients and amounts as a victoria sponge cake except with half the amount of flour again because its the flour that helps the structure. I'd bake a test cake first to check it works but I know what it's like when you finally find a great recipe and don't want to spend ages testing others for flavour etc. Good luck! Hope it works.
(If it doesn't work, you can blame a PME tutor!) ;)
Thanks everyone so much for the help. The wedding was yesterday and everything went wonderful. The cake cut well. I ended up adding an extra egg and half a cup of sour cream for each box. If your interested the cake is my Purple Blossom Wedding Cake, in my photos.
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