My sis & her partner are coming out to Perth next week & are getting married. I would love to make their wedding cake, we are all on a bit of a budget so cant really afford to buy a nice shop one. Im not the best at making cakes so am thinking of buying a large square chocolate cake & decorating it myself ! The problem is i want to make some figures to put on the top of it, was thinking a bit of sand, a palm tree & a little bride & groom in beach wear. As far as i know these have to be made out of royal icing, but i cant find any in Coles or Woolies ! is there anything else i could use? As you can tell i know nothing about decorating cakes !
Dont think they they will appreciate playdough !!!


Nicky

Hello...........you might try fondant instead, its just like modeling clay and you will suprise yourself with what you can create from this stuff..........
You should look for merriunge powder usually found in a craft store here in the USA, don't know about over there ? or powdered egg whites......mixed with icing sugar it creates the royal icing..... it will need at least 48 hours to dry tho.........you can use brown sugar for the sand............
Im a baker/pastry chef so PM me if I can help you further
hope this helps!

Thank you Tbag ! that sounds great, will have a look for it today.

Nicky

Something like this? but with a more wedding theme?

Can you use marzipan? This can be moldable and edible as well.
What about plain old brown sugar for the sand?

Siren

Would be a bit 'crunchy' to eat - mind you a bit like eating sand!!!

What a great cake ! did you make that yourself ?


Nicky

Yes


Ow (that was the wife kicking me)

Our wedding cake decorator in UK from some cartoon photos we found.

Have no idea how she did it - I just enjoyed eating it

But you could find a decorator and do something (just avoid the word "wedding".

Haha! I hadn't even thought about eating that bit!! LOL I suppose it's as close to reality as you can get without a mouthful of beach!

Siren

I made my own wedding cake as well as a few for friends and family. My favorite was one I made for a friend of a friend for her winter wedding. It was a vanilla cake with plain icing between the layers cut in perfect cubes, each one smaller than the one below it, like a stack of boxes. Each box was then iced in plain vanilla icing and stacked. When they were all stacked I made a chocolate fondant by melting dark chocolate with 35% cream and poured it over the whole thing so it had a perfectly smooth coating of almost black chocolate. I then made lime green leaves and placed them randomly over the entire cake. It sounds really gross, but it was absolutely lovely and tasted delicious. Anyway...
Royal icing is very easy to make. It's not really edible, but if you plan on making flowers it's what I would recommend. The recipe is as follows:
1 egg white
about 1 kg icing sugar
pinch cream of tartar
pinch salt

Place the egg white in a clean glass or metal bowl. Beat on high speed with a mixer, adding icing sugar 1/2 cup at a time until it is well mixed. The right consistency is when it's stiff enough to hold it's shape, but not so stiff that it looks dry. To colour, put a bit in a small bowl and add paste colours. Drops of liquid colour thin the icing too much. If you have a pastry bag, make sure that it is absolutely clean and free of any grease before you put the icing in or it will ruin it. You will need to buy the tips from a baker's supply store and I would recommend that you PRACTICE plenty before making flowers for the cake. I used to practice by puting waxed paper (or parchment) on a cookie sheet and then you can just throw the whole sheet out when you are done. Any good ones can be peeled off when they're dry and used.
Look on the Wilton site for cake decorating advice and some really nice designs.

I too made my own weding cake and also done quite a few for family and friends. My biggestst challenge so far... 7 cakes for my cousins wedding (and he is a chef ) 2 Chocolate, 2 lime drizzle, 2 victoria sponge and a fruit cake.
I did an icing course and always use fondant icing. I can do simple decorations but a specialist cake making shop has TONS of wedding stuff, figures, flowers etc. They also tend to sell different coloured fondant to make stuff with and also cake boards and boxes for transport that my be useful.
Also brown castor suger would be good sand and not so crunchy.... good luck it can be pretty stressful.

Why not go for a naughty theme, I love decorating cheeky cakes and they always give a giggle to everyone who has recieved one. I even had to make a rude one for a friends wedding where I had snow white and the 7 dwarfs cake, highly amusing

Anyway go to the library and try and find a book by Debbie Brown as she has some great ideas for cake decorations. They all use the ready to roll fondant you can buy in most shops.

Sasha

We got married last week and my DIL made our cake. She got Woolies to make a plain sponge, and then filled it herself with strawberry cream, and covered the whole thing in cream and fresh strawberries and chocolate flake. It looked spectacular, and tasted great. The only thing was that being so hot in Adelaide last week it went off quite quickly so a lot ended up in the bin!

You can get some great cake toppers on eBay. I think the big supermarkets sell ready made fondant icing you can mold and colour to whatever you like.

Sharon

Thank you everyone for your replies, i feel very inspired now !

Nicky

http://www.abfab.auz.com/

Nicky I passed this place on the Tram this morning.