Please excuse my ignorance. I'm fairly new to 'cake decorating' and am learning something new everyday!
I have been torting (spell?) my cakes. Instead of butter cream frosting I like using jams. I love the punch of flavor. The problem I'm having is keeping the jam in it's own space. It seeps into the cake layer below.
I recently tried to add powdered jello mix with the jam in hopes to cure this problem ... but that didn't do it. (Although it gave the flavor a bigger bunch!)
Anyone have any tips?
I have not been keeping my cakes in the fridge. I'm betting that might help. I mean, it IS jam. I'm probably lucky nobody has gotten sick yet.
I'm afraid refrigerating my decorated cake will dry it out.
Are you making a dam of icing to hold the filling in? Use a #10 or #12 plain piping tip and pipe a circle of buttercream just inside the edge of your bottom layer, fill with filling, put the top layer on and then go around with the same piping tip and buttercream and fill in the line on the side of the cake where the two layers meet. Smooth that line with an icing spatula and then crumb coat, chill the cake and final coat the cake with buttercream. Piping that dam and then filling in that space between the two layers works very well to hold filling in, but even so, if the jelly you are using is too thin it will still want to ooze. You may have to heat the jelly, add a bit of cornstarch dissolved in water and cook till it thickens, cool to room temperature and then refrigerate till cold.
Great Ideas! I will follow up on these suggestions and let you know! THANKS!
When I first read you post I was picturing your cake absorbing all the liquidness of the jam... is that what the problem is or is it infact what everyone else has explained here with the oozing from the sides? If it's the absorbtion problem I would think sprinkling the cake with powdered sugar or maybe even spreading a little bit of buttercream icing on the bottom/top of the cake and then placing the dam around that and then adding the jam to the inside of the little nifty box you just created lol then adding your next cake layer and filling the gap.....
Your right. It isn't oozing from the sides. I put a ring of buttercream along the edge of the cake and then filled it with the jam.
It's the jam in the middle that seeps into the cake layer below.
I like the idea of a thin layer of buttercream on the cake layers.
I am going to try that next.
Thank you!
You're quite welcome Sapphire. Good luck with it and let us know how well it works or how bad of an idea it was lol. I'm sure it'll work out fine though 
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