Hello everyone! I'm new to the forums here.. What great information! Well, I'm hoping you can help me here. I'm doing a small wedding cake.. and I was sent a picture of what kind of cake she wants. But I'm unsure how to do it. I'm including the picture of the cake... Now, It looks like buttercream to me but it could be fondant. Also, the scrolling looks painted on, not piped on right? If that's so.. how was it done?

Any thoughts and ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

I think that is actually piped on - if you look at the top towards the back side you can see a couple of bumps - i think that is the piping, though I could be wrong. You could paint it on if you wanted, though! There are so many techniques to get looks you want, you don't have to stick with the one they used as long as it makes the bride happy!

It kind of looks like fondant covered cake dummies?? The top edges are really squared off but it does look like the design was painted on fondant. I will be interested to see what other think!
To at least try and recreate, I would do fondant then paint it. The edges might not be so squared but I don't think they would realize that. Keep us posted when it's done!!

It looks to me like buttercream with very meticulous freehand piping. How do you do it? Practice piping!

You could do it in fondant or butter cream. You would just need to get the BC really smooth. I would say pipe it with RI.... practice, practice, practice

I think it's piped because when I look closely, I can see all the texture along the edges.

thanks everyone! So, I've done basic scroll work. But this looks a lot nicer to me.. requires a little more attention to detail i think. Is there anyway for me to somehow get the design onto the cake first and THEN pipe over it? like tracing? hmmmmm

Thanks everyone!

Maybe if you had a cookie cutter stencil or something you could press into the cake then pipe on top of it???

There are scrollwork impression mats, but it's hard to get the right size with them for the proportions you are looking for. I bought one a couple of years ago and it was really nice, but the scrolls were way smaller than I really wanted them for my design. You can print out the size you want and either use that to practice or poke holes with a toothpick through it into your fondant and trace. You could also find a stencil that closely matches and use icing writers or a toothpick to trace the shape, then pipe over that.

If you draw the pattern onto parchment paper you can then lay the pattern against the cake (ink side out) and use a needle (or a scriber) to poke the pattern onto the cake. You would have to draw it out for each tier though.

That cake is the average cake covered in piping. So really a cake covered in buttercream or fondant (the picture looks like buttercream). Then do piping detail using a tip but that piping to me looks like the used chocolate to pipe with instead of an icing like royal or buttercream.