Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

I have to make a 3 tire wedding cake. Bottom tire sponge cake 2nd & 3rd dummy cakes. The design requires buttercream but not sure how buttercream will adhere to dummy or how long will it stay in place.

Hi Kath
I’m just doing a 5 tier wedding cake, all dummies. I’m using Trex to coat the dummies which works very well and gives good adhesion for the fondant. Much cheaper than buttercream and as nothing is being eaten ….
However, I have covered a dummy with crusting buttercream. I did brush with edible glue initially just to give some adhesion. It worked very well and was quite stable with the Trex content.

Thanks for advice sorry I do not know what crusting buttercream is , do you have a
recipe suitable for these dummy cakes. Thanks Kath

Hi Kath35

I would suggest doing a trial run first to see how you get on. Here’s a crusting buttercream recipe:

Rustic Wedding

It’s rather a large amount so you could halve or quarter it if you’d just like to experiment. There are many more recipecs online, see them all by google searching ‘crusting buttercream’.

A good stiff crusting buttercream should adhere to the styrofoam without problem. It’s always best to play with a small amount so you don’t get surprises when you try it for real.

Hope this helps.

ps…. just found this, have a peek at the discussion here, it’s relevant to your question:
http://www.cakecentral.com/forum/t/600424/buttercream-on-styrofoam-or-what-else-can-i-use

The Contemporary Buttercream Bible is an excellent book (Valeriano/Ong). Can be sourced from Amazon. The girls had a stand at last year’s cake decorating show at the NEC – amazing!