Hi all,

I have been looking around at methods I can use make a birthday cake next week for my daughters 16th birthday. I have found something that I think even I can't mess to up too badly, but I'm worried about the heat. We live in Florida and her party is going to be outside at a lake. I will not have anyway to keep the cake cool for the hours I have to go and do all the set up and waiting for cake to be cut.

I made her brothers cake in May and the icings melted and kinda slid off to the side. He didn't seem to care, but I don't want it to happen again with her cake. I saw a few posts asking about what types of icing hold up the best in summer heat and I will try one of those recipes for the buttercream, but what about chocolate decorations?

I am going to use melted chocolate and trace over the decorations she wants but I am worried about how well the chocolate will hold up in 95 plus degree heat. How long can the melted chocolate hold up in the heat? What can I do to keep the cakes/cupcakes cool duting the day in a place with no electricity?

What design are you going for?  Even shortening-based buttercream will melt in that kind of heat.  So whatever you do I would keep the cake/cupcakes in a cool spot until you are ready to take some pics and serve it.

To keep things cool until you are ready to cut the cake, you can get some coolers and bags of ice and put the cake/cupcakes in the coolers.  Or park your car in the shade and leave it running with the AC on full blast.  But I wouldn't put the cakes/cupcakes out until you are ready to serve them.

Boy that is a tough one ;(   I suggest getting se4veral boxes, one just larger than the other.  Put the cake in a cake box, put that into the smaller of the 2 boxes(just bigger than the cakebox) then put all into the largest one.  Pack ice packs (fz ziploc type bags filled w/water or ice cubes.  A lgr block of ice melts slower than cubes.) all around the two boxes.  What the other poster said will be helpful if you can find shade but I'd be leary of letting a car run unattended! 

Thanks so much for the ideas. The design she wants is something soft of like the picture I attached, except instead of 4 sections she only wants three. One of the MockingJay pin for Hunger Games, one of the pentacle for Supernatural, and one of the rune symbols for Mortal Instruments/Shadowhunters for the top portion. To be honest I have no clue what I'm going to do on the sides or bottom of the cake yet. I am a novice cake decorator at best and looked around and think that probably the most fool proof method I am going to find to make the decorations is printing templates and tracing them with candy melts. And she hates fondant, so I figured I would try buttercream, but the heat is real issue.

I can try to pack ice around it in the coolers - I was worried about it shifting and messing something up but I can work that out I'm sure.

If you have any suggestions for the cake, or better ways to make it work that are SUPER simple (like kid simple lol) I would love to hear them.

I know yousaid the customer hates fondant, but since the decorations are being kept simple & mimimun I still would use it.  Just be sure to add extra flavoring to it......I do that all the time.....just tip the bottle of vanilla onto a hunk of fondant and knead it in.......usually did that 4-5 times depending on how big a hunk I was working with.  It makes a huge difference ;)  And keep your elements on the thin side.  What I see in that pic is about dbl thickness than what I would make them.  They can just take them off and not eat it.....same as any non-edible decoration that some use.  I'm thinkling choco transferes are going to melt almost instantly - though I have never been to FL so don't really know how bad the humidity/heat is. 

I didn't make the picture above lol - I wish I could, that was simply an example found that she liked. I was going to use melted chocolate because I can trace over the designs with it and get a decent looking end product. Can I do this with fondant? Maybe cut the picture out like a stencil and trace around it?

It is incredibly hot here in the summer, anything less than 90 degrees is considered a gift. Humidity sits at about 95% on any given day.

Yes, you can use a cutout pic to trace around.  I understand you didn't make the pictured cake but it is very easy to do those decorations.  As you mentioned, just trace it.   Just think of fondant as 'cookie dough'- it is basically the same.......instead of flour you are using powdered sugar :).  And if it is flavored as I mentioned above, the taste changes a lot :)  What I tell people who say they don't like it is what they object to is the mouth feel rathen than the taste as we here in the US didn't have that as we grew up.  Has she ever had a Tootsie Roll?  That's just choco fondant.  So tell her to think of it as a vanilla TootsieRoll :)