Wedding Cake Trial

6" white round cake, rolled buttercream frosting, buttercream frosting, raspberry filling

Techniques Used-balls, dots, quilting

Focus-working with rolled buttercream frosting

This is my very first wedding cake.  The bride wanted a cupcake tower with a 6" round on top.  I decided to do a trial cake because I was using rolled buttercream, something I haven't used before.  It is like fondant except using ingredients more like buttercream.  I haven't tasted a fondant frosting that I liked so this seemed like a great alternative to get the fondant look, but not the taste.  It's more oily than buttercream, but I put a little bit of powdered sugar on top to make it look less shiny.

I learned quite a few things while doing this cake.  Firstly, there needs to be a buttercream crumb coat on the sides.  This is so that the rolled buttercream will lay flat (if you look at the sides, you can see the buttercream dips in slightly where cake layers meet). 

Secondly, I need to figure out a better way to do the quilting technique.  As you see in this second picture, it looks different from the first picture.  The diamonds are bigger in this picture.  I thought I was going the same angle the entire time, but when I got to the end there was significantly more space left at the bottom than at the top.  I think I can fix this by looking at it at eye level instead of looking down.  Also, I will go more slowly so that I can change mistakes and have less to fix.

This cake was decorated August 2011.