Amount of buttercream / fondant on cakes these days

[Ceàrdaman]

Is it me or is the amount of buttercream / fondant on cakes these days, just totally bonkers?

It's like the cake isn't important, but the toppings are the main event now?

Sure they need to look nice, but jeez

I guess IABU if the decorations and fondant are the important bits

And IANBU if the cake should take centre stage

(Images from google)

I love buttercream and because I make my own buttercream with real butter, shop bought cupcakes, cakes etc are horrible. Same with the cake, home made is always nicer.

I've bought a cake from a professional baker because I make my own and can decorate pretty well too. They aren't as fancy now as I don't have the time anymore but I've been known to make 3 tiered, different flavours, fondant decorated cakes for my children's birthdays!

I do love fondant too though although some brands are crap. I used to get mine from a wedding cake shop!

YANBU

Agree, but I’ve never been the biggest fan of buttercream even as a child until I started making it myself for cakes, found out I love French buttercream.

I prefer a cream cheese frosting for most flavours, not as sweet. I believe in a light layer of frosting and I should be able to taste the cake and the frosting with both complementing each other, not just a mouthful of sugar.

I don't buy cupcakes in shops any more as the buttercream is too thick, it makes me feel a bit sick.

We make our own & i pipe it on far less thick. Fondant is often incredibly thick too. I find baking at home to be the best solution. Tastes better too :)

I hate American buttercream and I live there!

TBF it got popular as it is so easy, just butter, icing sugar and flavouring. But you need so much sugar to make it work, and it's always a little bit gritty from the cornflour in the icing sugar.

I can make several sorts of buttercream. I usually prefer the meringue based ones, but it all depends on what flavour I want, as well as the weather. French buttercream (aka pate a bombe: sugar syrup whipped into the yolks, then butter) is delicious and silky but insanely rich.

Interestingly, Americans also tend to think British cakes are on the dry side. The goal for American recipe developers is for the cake to be moist. (The British think all American desserts are too sweet. Some are, pecan pie is absolutely tooth-aching, but not all.)

Oh yes, those and the chocolate sculptures.

I dont want to eat something that's been sooo manipulated

I don't like the thought of the fondant being handled. I will eat buttercream but I would prefer a nice old fashioned butterfly cake!

buttercream should be used sparingly- either a little spoonful with jam for a butterfly cake or spread thinly on the top of the cake before sprinkles are added- none of these swirling monstrosities.

I do prefer a good lemon drizzle or chocolate orange drizzle cake though.

@FluffyFanny interesting! It’s been butter icing for me and in all my mum’s ancient recipe books and handwritten recipe cards, and only recently rebranded as buttercream more widely with the grey squirrel invasion of bully boy cupcakes when Sex and the City inflicted them on us and killed the fairy cake. (A bit like how macaroons, which had always been macaroons or, if you wanted to be clear and differentiate, French macaroons or coconut macaroons, got a PR number and became macarons. That was in the wake of cupcake oversaturation actually, just after the whoopie pie failed to take off, but before the brownie renaissance. Feel I should do a PhD in this. Pretty Huge Dollop of butter icing.)

What is a stunt pineapple?

Same here!

Yep, American cake recipes will almost always have something like sour cream or buttermilk to make it moister, but I think to a British person it makes the cake too dense. British seem to favour light and airy sponge (unless it is a doorstop fruit cake). Personally I find British recipes too dry, if not on the day they are made, definitely within a day or so. Chocolate cake in particular I want very moist.

Agree completely that meringue based buttercream is the best, but also think many people make standard buttercream poorly - either because they don’t use real butter, don’t beat the butter sufficiently, or add too much sugar.

UK cakes are a bit drier as you are meant to drink them with gallons of tea. Obviously.

I won't take accusations of dry cake from either the Spanish or Italians though. Some of the stuff they serve there could double as condensation absorbing blocks.

I agree, I hate cup cakes for that reason - the cake to icing ratio is all off. Give me an old fashioned fairy cake any time 🤣

Totally agree OP it drives me bananas.
(Also all these cakes themselves are too sweet these days as a sidebar)

We got that off the Americans I'm afraid, bland substandard cake with huge volumes of frosting

prepare to be shocked. I don’t use butter for the cake batter, I use Stork margarine, from the tub
My cakes are never dry.
Butter of course for the butter icing/cream.

Here you go - fondant

(thread was a general discussion on not enough cake to match the decorations, but nevermind)

christ - this is a CAKE!!!??

who would would want to eat that????

And this is why I don't buy cakes.

Margarine!

I won't take accusations of dry cake from either the Spanish or Italians though. Some of the stuff they serve there could double as condensation absorbing blocks.

I agree. Some cuisines get an undeserved pass on their fairly pathetic cakes and desserts. Whereas nobody ever rates German cuisine, but their cakes are absolutely delicious - not designed for the eye but for the mouth.

I hate the term 'cupcake' but I'm in Yorkshire-and we never called them fairycakes, - it was always buns- my mum would often say "I'll just make a dozen buns"

Back in the day, buttercream never seemed to be used as icing, it was more a filling- replacing cream in victoria sandwich cake, or the filling in a butterfly bun, or chocolate flavoured buttercream to fill a chocolate cake. It's only in recent years that we seem to have seen a fashion for covering an entire cake in it.

But this cake isn't FOR eating 😂! Or at least that is a very secondary purpose.

It is primarily a temporary decorative object. Which you may either like or detest depending on taste (double entendre intended).

So why make it from an edible source?
It makes no sense, you often see people eating them.... yuck

The best cake in the world is a completely plain chocolate sponge, no icing/fondant/ganache/decoration at all. My stepmum used to make a huge one before ski trips, and we’d all have decimated it by Northern France. I don’t know if it was the Aga that made it special, but none of us have ever been able to recreate it.