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asked May 5th 2016

Covering cake dummies advice please

I’ve never covered a cake dummy before, I’m making a four tiered cake bottom tier 12″ dummy with Pauls ruffle rose design, 10″ & 8″ real cake and 6″ dummy cake, 2 tiers are silver and 2 white, all cakes will be 5″ depth. I have a number of questions and hope someone can offer advice

1) What does everyone use to make sure the fondant sticks to the cake dummy, on some of Pauls tutorials he uses ganache but it seems a waste as its not cheap to make, some say water and others gel

2) how far in advance can they be covered without fear of the fondant discolouring

3) the 12″ dummy with fondant and all the ruffles I concerned the weight will make the fondant crack and fall off when it dries

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accepted

Hi Diane, I recently made a dummy cake covered with ruffles I just cover the dummy lightly with water then cover with sugarpaste if I need it super neat I do 2 layers but when I covered with ruffles just did one base layer and then stuck the ruffles on (half and half sugarpaste and flower paste) and then stuck these on with edible glue. There was no issues with this and it looked great and lasted as it’s still in my cupboard! Good luck x

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I brush my dummies lightly with piping gel before covering.

Yvonne x

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Thank you everyone for your help, I used trex and it worked a treat x

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Hi Diane

You could use Trex/Crisco as the glue. This would be much cheaper and very effective. See Paul demonstrate it here:

Carousel Cake


The dummies can be covered as and when you like. As long as they are not in direct sunlight the colour shouldn’t fade. However please read some comments in the following link and in the links contained within on fading colour here:

Food colouring fading


Gumpaste becomes lighter in weight as it dries so the ruffles on the bottom tier should remain stable. It’s not a bad idea to keep some spare paste of the same colour in case you do have breakages.

Hope this helps. If you need more information please post again.

EDIT: Dummies are very light and move about when being iced. It helps to place a nonslip mat under the board to make icing more stable.

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