carboxymethylcellulose is cmc aka tylose--

every ingredient we use is a chemical--water is a chemical--

i think the distinction we are trying to make is about synthetic ingredients not chemicals

perfect example -- most white flour is bromated using potassium bromate and that's besides the complicated chemical process that produced the fine white flour in the first place--add to that the synthetic chemicals they add in because they stripped all the nutrients in the refining process -- for example the iron additive can mess up our livers over time etc.-- that's kind of important--you're using flour right?

here's some of the stuff they put in the cream that can be used to make the ganache -- sodium alginate, carrageenan, gelatine, sodium bicarbonate, tetrasodium pyrophosphate, alginic acid = thickeners--if you fed your kid a yogurt likely they had some of those chemicals especially so called 'greek' yogurt--

so fwiw just because you are using ingredients that you are familiar with and have average names--that doesn't mean you are not using a ton of synthetics with gigantic names--or that your ingredients have not gone through tremendous chemical processes--

they put chemicals on food packaging materials--i had a kid on a special diet so i learned a few things about it--as a food producer i found it valuable to be aware of these things-- i mean i still use white flour for tier cakes & gingerbread at christmas & stuff--i can't hardly eat it anymore myself it goes directly to my jiggly thighs ;)

I sure giggled and snorted a lot when I started work in a grocery store bakery and got to use ButtRcreme... Until I tasted it, BLEAH! That is no laughing matter, and filled with air pockets. Used to drive me up a wall. Smooth and smooth and smooth, for nothing.

It sounds like something I need right now, actually. I just spend 4 days at my grandma's and she buys John Wayne toilet paper. Rough and tough, and don't take sh-- stuff, off no one.

AWhat I like about meringue icings, is fridging them does indeed lock the fillings into place, no need for settling time, or pushing on them to speed up and bulging that may occur. I fill and immediately ice, and pop it straight into the fridge to firm up so I can work on fine tune the smoothing after it's chilled for a bit.

I don't go crazy with the amount of filling either, so there's not a huge gob waiting to bulge out. But in my experience, using an mbc of some sort, allows me to skip the settling time, there aren't ever any issues like bulging, cake farts, bubbles, etc. And when it returns to room temp for serving, nothing has shifted or bulged. IT remains locked in place.

APardon any grammatical or spelling errorz, typing from dimly lit phone.

A

And is this a regular occurrence with your cakes? Are you selling these, and if so, do they look like this before they are.collected and or delivered?

AI prefer to able to say that there aren't more than five or six total ingredients in one of my cakes. Flour, eggs, butter, sugar, dairy products, the leaveners. Vanilla. That's about it. There's more crap in the icing itself going the route of that Butt-r-creme. Gives me the heebie jeebies.

And it's not a "being superior" thang either, more and more people nowadays demand wholesome food, and although cake is hardly wholesome, at least it can be natural and not filled with synthetic ingredients.

You guys have no idea how useful your replies have been, and I've snorted at some too :P 

I am quite a newbie and haven't used dams yet, I live in Chile and I was taught to use the pans to fill my cakes: Line the pan with plastic wrap; Put one layer of cake, syrup, filling, cake, syrup, filling, etc. Wrap well. Put inside fridge overnight or even 2 nights ahead. You see, people here really like their layer cakes "moist", all fruity and whatnot. No wonder sometimes they "sweat" under the fondant.

I would like to try the dam next time I make a cake. Does Meringue (swiss or italian) BC sets hard as butter when inside the fridge?, Is (hard) ganache a good alternative for BC as a dam?

Thanks!

Yes to both of your questions.  Both Swiss & Italian meringue butter creams set up hard because of the butter and ganache makes a wonderful dam.  I use a lot of fruit fillings so I use both depending on the cake.

Thanks JWinslow!! :D

This thread was going to be my exact question. I have done maybe 8 cakes since I started working with fondant. Some turn out just fine, others not so much. I recently did my sisters wedding cake back in August, and would like to learn from my mistakes. This cake was a bahemith of a cake, and made me sick of fondant for a time. The cake was 16*16*5 rice crispy base, 12*12*5  double layer chocolate w/ old fashioned butter cream base, and 8*8*5 double layer lemon cake with strawberry lemonade filling cake. I do know that part of my problem was that I had no way of chilling the cake to let the butter cream harden due to size, and then it had to travel 45 minutes in a car whose ac broke that day. (also did not help that I had 2 days to do this cake due to being both the wedding planner, bridesmaid, and cake maker :S never again!) The biggest problem I had was elements falling off and my butter cream bulging and shifting under the fondant. Also as hard as I tried I was never able to achieve a sharper corner.

Elements on this cake:

Poured sugar jewels, and round the dragon is standing on

Molded and hand painted jewels and pewter pieces

Piped bottom layer. (no problem there, just had to pipe whole layer due to flaws)

Any and all advice and critique is welcome.

natfencer, May I ask why a 16x16x5 tier of RKT.  Was it going to be eaten? 

It was what they wanted. They were insistent on wanting the bottom layer all rice crispy so they could take that and eat it later. They didn't save any other cake just the bottom. IMO that was a lot of rice crispy to try to eat through .

It just seemed odd to me   -

So moving to your edges.  In order to get close to sharp edges with fondant your butter cream/ganache needs to be sharp also.  A nice fondant finish begins with a smooth finished butter cream or ganache.  Although I always chill my cakes before putting fondant on, many don't.  Getting sharp corners takes practice and technique.  There are many youtube videos you can access to learn corners.  Your corners appear a little droopy - you can also apply extra butter cream/ganache to fill them out before covering with fondant.   Another technique is called paneling - where you cut exact pieces of fondant, let them set up and apply the fondant that way. 

I can't stress enough that learning to do corners by smoothing butter cream/ganache and using two fondant smoothers is a valuable skill, just not one anyone learns overnight :)

The elements appear heavy.  What did you apply them with?  I would have either used a thick royal icing or melted chocolate.  You can use freeze spray with the chocolate to apply quickly.

Hope this helped some for the future. 

Jeanne

95% of white flour is loaded with synthetic ingredients just as bad as dawn's icing--

king arthur and white lily flour are not bromated but white lily is still bleached flour--b.l.e.a.c.h.e.d.-- and white lily does not brown as well as the bromated flour--

king arthur sells the 'enhancer' on the side thusly:

• ​lecithin found in a lot of chocolate-- lecithin is ubiquitous in tons of food--it is a by product of soy sludge
• titanium dioxide -- white food color--almost all food color is wonked out wonkiness
• potassium sorbate a synthetic preservative found in fondant
• tetrafluoroethene to cold spray our chocolates

there's too many synthetics and just plain weird sh*t in use today to be squeamish about it--avoiding them is just about a full time job--

picking and choosing the ones you want --sure of course--but we are all using and eating them constantly every day--

AThankfully, us little operations that don't have product that needs to keep fresh for days, can avoid that stuff.

yeah little maybe but slightly famous anyhow

I don't dam my fillings but I do press down on them to make sure the fillings aren't going to compress more while the cake sits around. I don't use sleeved fillings, either, just flavored buttercreams or thin layers of preserves etc, so the fillings don't really need dams. If you don't put super thick layers of filling that can also keep bulging from happening, but pressing down on the cake before icign them really helps.

As far as BUTT-r-creme goes, it's basically shortening, confectioner's sugar and artificial flavorings. Nasty.

all i'm saying is we should know what these labels say and what the ingredients are-- regular flour contains synthetics--

i guess the bugs start out natural, cakefat, but the red food color formula has been changed constantly for years and years because it is found over and over to be unsatisfactory in some way--so they re-compose it--and it fails again--on & on it goes...

propylene glycol can be deemed kosher in some formulations--

poinsettias, calla lilies and hydrangeas are most natural and poisonous if ingested--

so we all just gotta use our heads on this--

my recommendation is read the labels and know what it means--know what you're putting out there in your products

AI completely agree with you k8. I like to know what I'm putting in to my body- and I for one don't want to go around eating bugs!! Even bread these days contain some form of hair, I find that disgusting. But for religious reasons I have to know what I'm eating and I don't think it's a bad idea that everybody does alittle research

Where is that beating a dead horse image?

Where the hell is the OP??? LOL

AI can't stress enough that learning to do corners by smoothing butter cream/ganache and using two fondant smoothers is a valuable skill, just not one anyone learns overnight :)

The elements appear heavy.  What did you apply them with?  I would have either used a thick royal icing or melted chocolate.  You can use freeze spray with the chocolate to apply [/quote]

Jeanne, Thank you so much for constructive feedback. When it comes to the sharp corners how thin does the fondant need to be to allow for the weight too not droop the corners? I use home made mm fondant. Made out of nothing but marshmallows and powdered sugar, and butter cream is nothing but pure butter powdered sugar milk and vanilla.

My elements were just made out of fondant with exception to the poured sugar. I have only ever used water or melted marshmallow paste to attach.

Everything I have ever done cake wise has been with the thought process of "that looks fun, I wanna try it" a lot of people called me crazy for attempting this cake so early into my cake making experiences :p

AI bake with white lily flour, for all of my desserts. I never have a problem with browning. I also use swans down.