Hello all!

My friend ordered a cake for her friend's birthday from me. It is based on an Hermes scarf that she got her friend, with a pretty, nautical theme. I am located in NYC and the humidity here right now is through the roof. Even though I had the a/c on I think my cakes were too cool when I stacked and covered them, because when I put my fondant on it was sweating more than I have honestly ever seen a cake sweat before.

My first challenge came when I tried to paint on the sweating fondant. Not smart, I know, but the cake is due today and the only time I had to work on it was last night. The ocean scene I painted around the side was pretty faint, so I decided to also paint on a separate piece of fondant and then put that on top. That turned out ok, although my border is pretty ugly, haha. But that is not my biggest issue here.

As you can see from the picture, there is a HUGE air bubble that showed up under the fondant over night. I had already dealt with another huge air bubble on the back of the cake, but the fondant was still soft so even though it doesn't look perfect, I was able to smooth it out somewhat, and figured that when I got home from work today I could quickly figure out some way to patch this in a cute way. But now I am also contending with a huge, DRY air bubble that is towards the front and I am sort of freaking out. The fondant is not nearly as pliable as before and because it spent all night drying with that bubble, the fondant is stretched out in that area. Add on top of that the fact that I have a ocean scene painted around the whole side of the cake and I feel totally at a loss...I can remove the bubble but clearly this will leave an ugly ear that will need to be covered, but with what? And WHY are these enormous bubbles showing up? Because I covered the cake cold? I was told that fondant LIKES a cold cake, haha.

Thank you so much in advance for your advice and please forgive my rambling!

I hope? Having a hard time adding a pic for some reason...

Haha ok, I added the pic to my album because I could not figure out how to make it work here, I add the picture but it never shows up! I love cake central but sometimes I don't think it's very user friendly. : /

The picture is in your photos. The site has been having some issues the last few days but they have been working on fixing it.

As far as the issue for the bubbles there are many thoughts on it, but I don't think anyone can totally pin point one reason why they happen. I would read some past posts on it to see if you can get some ideas.

I don't put any of my cakes in the fridge because of the humidity issues we have here in the south. I can't pull a bottle of water out of the fridge with out the outside of it being totally wet in a few minutes so I save myself some trouble.

Did you let the cake sit/settle for a few hours outside of the fridge?

As far as how to fix it, could you possible put another band of fondant around the side either over that one or cut that one off and put another one on?

Wow that is a big air bubble. Ok so one idea is that it looks like the bubble is close to the bottom of the cake. If that's the case, them you could remove the rope border around the bottom, try and carefully cut the bottom part of the bubble and smooth down into the bottom, then replace the rope border. You may have to make a new border but it would be worth it. If the fondant is as dry as you say, then this will still cause some cracking. Sadly your options are to deal or to take the painting off the top and recover the cake in fondant which is not ideal I know.

Also, just for future reference, it would be cute to repeat the rope border around your painting instead of the border you don't like.

And remember cake muggles probably won't even care about the cracking in the fondant although I know it willl bug you. Good luck.

Have you tried just pricking it with a pin? Then let it settle on its own. That's what we did at the bakery and it worked great. But this is a big bubble. However you might try it.

Thanks guys! I think you're right...in the inspiration image my friend gave me there was a red border AND a rope border, but I think I would have been better off just leaving the red border off, it really looks very "meh". Maybe if I have time after work I can add very thin rope borders to the red somehow?

Also thanks for the ideas, you're right that unless I take everything off, which I wish I had the time to do but don't, I will just have to deal with a messed up spot. Trying to think of how I could cover it...maybe cut out the silhouette of a boat? Haha.

I did try a pin prick and no luck! That bubble is enormous, right?? Haha. Sigh.

Oh, and yes the cakes were cold. Stupid me! My problem I think was that it was very humid but sort of chilly out so I tricked myself into thinking that the cold cakes would not matter. I clearly need to let them come to room temperature completely in the future, thank you for the tip!