Help On Stacking My First Wedding Cake!
Decorating By natportelli Updated 9 Mar 2017 , 1:03am by PrivateNameHere
Hi everyone
This is my first post and I desperately need help.
I am doing my first ever wedding cake Saturday week and it is a 2 tier mud cake. The bride wants a white chocolate ganache filling. The decorations will be ivory fondant with gold cake lace and red roses.
My questions are as follows:
- Is ganache okay to use under fondant?
- If the cake is for Saturday, when should I ganache it and then fondant it?
- Do I need to do the fondant on the day or do I need to do it prior so that it dries?
- How do I stop the top tier of cake from lifting off the fondant of the bottom layer when it is removed for serving?
- If I ganache and fondant the cake prior to Saturday, how do I keep it from not going off etc if it is not in the fridge?
Thank you in advance to anyone that can assist me at all with my questions. I'm not a professional baker and desperately need help and am stressing out.
Thanks Nat
Yes you can use ganache under fondant.
You can have it fully decorated on Thursday if you want. I'd go for Friday. I'd have it covered with fondant and stacked (with dowels! Good doweling is KEY!) and ready to decorate on Thursday evening.
The fondant shouldn't pull off the cake. You are using a cake board for the top tier, right? The cardboard of the board will not stick to the fondant. If you are worried about it, you can sift a bit of powdered sugar on the top of the bottom tier after you place your dowels but before you set the second tier on. Make sure you dowel through the middle twice if you can. Sorry, not sure how much of a noob you are :).
The ganache recipe I've used is fine not refrigerated, so I'd think it'd be fine. Not sure about your recipe.
How many cakes have you done before? Are you a complete beginner? Is this your first tiered cake?
Thanks so much for your response. I've made heaps of cakes before, but not tiered ones. I did a trial one for my sister's birthday and I had the issue of when I lifted the top tier off the fondant from the top of the bottom cake was stuff to the cake board of the top tier. Having said that, I had had the cake in the fridge so this may have been due to condensation?
My other problem is that I work full time and on the Friday night I have my best friend's 40th birthday party so won't be able to decorate it on Friday. So I will either need to finish it on Thursday or have it all ganached etc and then fondant it on Saturday, the day of the wedding. I have two acrylic dowels to go completely through the middle, plus other strong dowels to support the weight.
My ganache is white chocolate and cream, which is obviously heated and used to melt the chocolate and then I cool it down before ganaching.
If the weather is warm, could I refridgerate the cake once ganached and then take it out and leave it out once covered in fondant or would that present condensation issues as well? I'm just worried that if it is warm in Melbourne the week of the wedding that the ganache will go too soft and possibly droop a little? I'm not really a huge fan of working with fondant so I don't know how it reacts. I use Satin Ice.
Yes, the refrigeration did that to you. You can't refrigerate fondant without it getting all sticky.
Make sure the cake is room temp before you cover it with fondant to avoid any issues with that.
What kind of decor is going on the outside of the cake? Do you have to do anything special to it or is it just piping borders and placing flowers?
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