Decorating Wedding Cake

[gregcal]

A couple of weeks ago I posted on here asking if anyone could give me some help in baking a wedding cake. I am happy to say I have made a three tier cake. Lemon on the bottom. Vanilla for the middle and chocolate on top. I found a fantastic site Cakes bakes and cookies. Where I got the basic recipes for the different sizes of maderia cakes I used. Now I have to decorate and the happy couple want the cake covered in buttercream. Has anyone done this before and is it just the basic recipe, icing sugar and butter?

Hi,

I've decorated my son's birthday cake with butter cream before: I beat butter until it is white and fluffy then add double the weight of butter in sieved icing sugar and beat until smooth. I add a splash of milk if it is vanilla along with vanilla extract. This makes it very loose and creamy, fluffy.

I sometimes add lemon juice instead to make lemon butter cream or to make chocolate flavour I mix coco powder with hot water and add this.

I've never made butter cream with melted chocolate recipes though.

Are you going to tint it or leave it white? What sort of finish are you going for? Smooth, textured, are you piping flowers?

Post a picture!

When I've decorated cakes with simple piping I've used a regular buttercream recipe with a bit of added milk. It depends on how elaborate the design you're piping is though...you might be better with a "crusting buttercream" (yucky sounding I know!) if you're doing flowers. It will hold the detail better than a regular buttercream. Paste colours are miles better if you're colouring icing.

How are you planning on storing and transporting the cakes? Are you stacking them? All my wedding cakes have been buttercreamed then covered with fondant which definitely makes it less stressful (one wedding was in 30 degree heat and I was very glad the butter slick was contained). Good luck!

I was going to use fondant but the bride and groom want buttercream. I have been watching videos of how to smooth it and bought a turntable. Was not going to pipe as not very good at it. Planning to use fresh flowers for the topper and sugar paste to decorate. Also using ribbon around the join of each layer. Have heard of Italian meringue biuuercresm but don't know of anyone who has made or used this.

Thank you. I intend to use ivory colouring.

I recommend building in plenty of practice time-it is really difficult to get a flat finish on buttercream (I say this as an experienced baker!). Also the buttercream will make any sugar paste decorations go soft so they have to go on at the last minute.

Italian meringue buttercream is much harder to make than normal buttercream...you heat up sugar and water to a specific temperature then whisk the boiling liquid into egg whites so they cook. Then the butter gets whisked in. It tastes nice but goes grainy quite easily if you get the temperature wrong or over eat it. It tastes lovely though!

Happy baking

Over beat not over eat! I do have a tendency to over eat buttercream though...