Cake decorating April 3, 1997 Topic: 'HOW DO I BAKE 10 WEDDING CAKES AND DECORATE THEM ALL IN ONE WEEK?'

Hi everyone and welcome to all newcomers to our live chats! We are chatting about cake decorating..9-10pm EST... You can call me DEE for short...hope you all enjoy

CASARTCAKE: me too.... my house is a mess... but here I sit...but it's for the sake of my career, I lie. Now for a few business tips...

Yes, I do...I'm very organized and I have 3 ovens. One is a double-oven stove. Luckily, I found one that I can fit an 18" round cake into the bottom oven. The other oven is a commercial oven which holds full sheet cakes, etc.

I work all week when I have a lot of cakes to do, even though they may all be for Saturday. Even though what I'm going to tell you seems 'commercial' I assure you I decorate like you would at home, with lots of stringwork and detail. I am very particular that my cakes are never over-baked and everything is fresh.

Once I did 14 wedding cakes (5 of those with side cakes, stairways and fountains!) This took me from 6 am until 3 am the next morning. Most of the time I only have 2-4 wedding cakes on a weekend. Then I don't do so much of it ahead. If flowers are all on tops, I even make those right on the cakes, in this case. But for over 4, I do make the flowers ahead. And NEVER make icing on Fridays!
TDJDHD: Dolores, do you know a good book for kid's birthday cakes? Dolores777: TD: yes I suppose;;wilton's lots of ideas...whats the theme?

Earlene's Part:

Dolores gave you lots of neat Easter ideas - thanks I enjoyed reading all of them. Lots of good sharing from everyone. Many cute ideas that I hope I can remember to do for my grandchildren next year. By the way the new baby is wonderful and doing well.

How do I bake 10 wedding cakes and decorate them all in one week? I don’t. If my brides all ordered basic designs and small cakes I might be able to bake and decorate 10 wedding cakes. But they don’t!!!!!!!

There are factors that determine how many cakes in a week you can do. How many ovens do you have? How many pans? How many mixers? with how many bowls? Do you have help? How much space do you have for cakes to sit once they are finished? How many cooling racks do you have? How much freezer space for advance baking is available?

In our shop we have three conventional ovens (one very large 28 X 24 - but the largest pan it will hold is 22 X 18), four of each size round pan, 2 each of the square, petal, hexagon and etc. , three kitchen aid mixers with 6 bowls, 10 - 16” by 25” heavy duty cooling racks, one helper and lots of shelf and table space for the cakes. One large upright home freezer reserved for cakes only when necessary. Two refrigerators, one for ingredients and one for icing, fillings and etc.

I do very little flowers on cakes from buttercream. Nearly all of our cakes are decorated with gumpaste or fresh flowers. This means that weeks ahead of baking a cake I probably should be working on the gumpaste flowers, leaves, royal lace points and etc. that will go on that cake. So there is always something that needs to be made ahead - where I get in trouble is procrastinating and not getting those things made far enough ahead of time. I do have a friend who helps me and while she is baking Tuesday and Wednesday I am usually making or coloring flowers, putting leaf arrangements together and etc. If you are working by yourself this need to be done before you start baking and you are more limited in how much you can do.

For the last three or four years we have done most of our baking on Tuesday and Wednesday and decorated the cakes on Thursday and Friday. This works great and we don’t find ourselves working the midnight shift very often anymore with this arrangement. The cakes that are baked on Tuesday are leveled, filled and crumb coated on Wednesday. The cakes that are baked on Wednesday are leveled, filled and crumb coated on Thursday morning. Tuesdays baked cakes are decorated on Thursday and Wednesdays are decorated on Friday. Once the cakes are filled and crumb coated we like for them to sit overnight so that they can settle. Any bulge around the middle can then be trimmed before the final coat of icing is applied and the cake decorated.

You have to find out what you personally can handle and know that you have a limit. My personal limit preference is three weddings a weekend. That is if all of those cakes have brides and grooms cakes. Because my cakes are priced according to the time it takes to accomplish that design I have learned that when I reach a certain $ amount I have to start turning cakes down. Sometimes that is one cake and sometimes I book 3 weddings and it is way under that $ amount.

I also think one of the most important things you can do to build your reputation is to make sure that cake is presented appropriately on the Brides table. And set up time for each wedding usually takes me from 1 to 4 hours depending on the cake designs. For instance if the Wedding cake is set up on our custom made swirl stand. Each cake is set on the stand at the reception site and then ribbon is wrapped around each tier base. If lace points are to be hung from the base of the tiers that usually takes anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour. If gumpaste flowers are to be cascaded down the cakes and they cannot be arranged at the shop I must allow another hour or two. If the Grooms cake is to have fresh fruit arranged on and around the cake that could take 30 minutes to an hour depending on the size and shape of the cake. And unless the Bride objects - those cakes will also have fresh greenery arranged at the base of each cake. So in this labor intensive set-up we might have to schedule at least four hours for set up. Thank goodness this type of scenario does not happen often. We live in a town that is rather spread out so you also have to allow for driving time. With normal easy set ups we usually allow about 2 hrs. per set up. 10 minute loading time, 10 to 20 minutes driving time, 1 hr. to set up and 10 to 20 minutes back to the shop to pick up another one to deliver. Occasionally we deliver one that can be set up in 15 minutes but not very often. So 10 wedding cakes in one weekend would be a nightmare for me with just two of us that could set them up.

I noticed some discussion about lace points and lace pieces and what the difference is. This is only my opinion. Lace points are small designs that you must make multiples (50 to 200+) of to go on, around or under the cakes. These lace point designs usually range in sizes from 1/4” to 1 1/2” in width and length accordingly. I have in the past attached royal lace points to fondant and buttercream iced cakes. They are each attached individually to the cake or the base plate of the cake. Lace pieces (4 to 24+) are larger pieces that would fit on the sides or tops of the cakes and project from the cake or be attached close to the cake. Wings are lace pieces that fit over the top edge and down the side of the cake. Column Lace is lace pieces that will be attached directly to the columns between the cakes.

I have a piece of plexiglass that a friend sent to me that is approximately 6” X 12” and it has diagonal lines protruding from one side in a diamond pattern. I think it came from a fluorescent light fixture. One of the designs we have requested often is embedded diamond shapes on the side of the cake. The last few times we have done this cake we iced the cakes, let them dry to the touch, then took this strip of the plexiglass and pressed it gently against the sides of the cake rotating the strip around the cake. Note: When you have someone cut this strip for you be sure it is cut straight. After we have it marked slightly with the plexiglass piece then we take a skewer or a small dowel rod and indent those lines even more. Pipe a dot, teardrop or heart at some of the intersections or in the centers of some of the diamonds. Use a simple ball border or snails trail at the base and a reverse snail trail at the top edge. Or pipe a heart border at the base and the top. Very basic, simple and clean lines and very easy to do. Have you had someone request the lattice work on the sides of a cake. You have only basic equipment. These are a few little tricks that will help with this side design. For instructions lets say we are working on an 10” round cake My favorite top border for this cake is a laying down long C with a shell on top pulled toward the middle of the cake. Between the C’s I use a gumpaste lace point, royal lace point or piped small bunches of royal icing grapes. Here is another place I sure wish we had some way to use graphics on here.
  • WSVKJ: Anyone have any good baby shower cake ideas.....it's a boy
  • CASARTCAKE: I like peppermint on chocolate... kills some of the richnesss.
  • Dolores777: Good baby shower cake in the 96 yr bk
  • Dolores777: baby cake;;;its a bathtub - shower cake witha baby
  • Szyhmkr: The one with the gum balls? It is cute!!
  • WSVKJ: okay. Let me be more pacific. It has to sevre 48-50 people.
  • CASARTCAKE: cute crocheted bib cake with run in decos on it in colettes cakes...
  • Dolores777: I have a cute baby cake on my web site...and did you see the one on Cake decorating Online??
  • Dolores777: Mine on Fondant Page will serve however many you want - is a half ball, horshoe and 8" Look out world, here I come"
  • Dolores777: Got a 1st com. cake on aol too
  • JPine52625: Leg also the Wilton book (make a bible) pan
  • Dolores777: check the photos on aol both on Cake dec online AND in the TEXT libraries
    • We have had some recipes that were not quite right and just didn’t know what to try next. A phone call to the home economics department at Texas Tech helped us solve our problems. We were told that the dry ingredients should be twice the liquid ingredients in cake recipes. I thought this little tidbit of information might also be of interest to you.

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