Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Hello,
I was wondering if anybody knew how to make cake dummies for displaying your work. Not just round cakes I mean for carved cakes for example I want to display a dog cake or a burger cake how do people display those with styrofoam? Is it possible to make such cakes in a dummy form? Please help as I have always been curious how people make fake carved cakes!

Hi sijaz1

Please take a look at my blog on dummies here:

Cake Dummies – by madeitwithlove

Dummies can also be carved at home with a serrated knife or with a special heated sytrofoam cutting wire. However if you don’t have any experience of using either method it can be costly, frustrating and messy.
Wearing a face mask is advisable to prevent inhaling the tiny fibres which result during carving.
To see retailers of the wire just google ‘Styrofoam cutting wire’ and view the smaller wires more suitable for home use. There are several youtube videos tutorials on the use of the tool.
If using a serrated knife, to prevent gouging, it’s best to use one with less jagged serration.
Personally I would buy professionally cut dummies. In the long run it works out less expensive and less stressful than cutting them at home.

For more information on the best uses and care of dummies, take a peek at several pages of answers here:
http://www.cakeflix.com/questions?s=cake+dummies

Hope the above is of help.

Just a tip too….to recycle your dummies, remove any ribbon and large icing decoration eg roses but then pop the dummy with the icing covering on in your dishwasher. They come out perfectly clean and undamaged. I didn’t believe it until I tried it. I use a hot cycle and they are fine on either the top or bottom shelf. Honest!!!!

Great answers. Thank you for the help guys 🙂

I saw paul’s chocolate shard cake tutorial today. It’s the wedding cake with lot of white chocolate. I see that he used styrofoam dummy instead of a real cake. He ganached it & then decorated as you would a real cake. My question is can I also make the same cake in dummy? I’ve never ganached dummy before….I thought the ganache would go bad after some time….any advice from someone who has ganached a dummy before would be greatly appreciated!!

Hi Saral ljaz

I haven’t used ganache on a dummy but yes you can do that. It will last for quite a long time, you’ll soon smell it once it starts to putrefy. Keep the decorated dummy in a cool environment as much as possible.
A less expensive option and with a better shelf life could be to use royal icing for covering and use the shards as normal. You’d need to colour the royal icing slightly so it’s the same as the chocolate.

Hi

If you want to make novelty shape cakes why not make rice crispy cakes and then you can carve and cut really easily