My first issue is that my friend wants a three tier cake... I have to drive about 45 minutes to an outside wedding in the middle of June... How do I make sure that my cake will hold up in travel and before it gets eaten? I should definitely assemble when i get there right? When I make a stacked cake the frosting from the board that sits on top always comes off with the board. What am I doing wrong? She wants any kind of dark red flowers plus they would be the topper as well. What type of flower would work best? Would it be better to do fondant flowers or buttercream? The frosting is going to be buttercream. Plus she wants black scroll work. I just can't seem to picture this combining well together. Any help would be great.

Thanks

It will come together well (promise) black white and red are very popular. I highly recommend you order the Successful Stacking DVD by Sugar Shack at www.sugaredproductions.com . It answers all your questions and more

You are right in the heat to construct on site. It's risky in June to travel with a stacked, all buttercream cake if you don't have a chilled van.
With buttercream sticking to the board: If you were going to be home I'd tell you to chill the tier before you remove it from the board. If you chill it 20-30 minutes, the buttercream will come off the board still attached to the cake. Since you won't probably be able to chill the cakes before you stack, bring an off set spatula and run it between the cake and the board before you remove it to stack it on the next tier. Bring a little extra buttercream with a small round tip, and after you place it on the tier, fill in the gaps and smooth with a spatula or paper towel.

You need to practice the black scroll on white buttercream and find a black buttercream that doesn't bleed. A lot of people have bleeding issues and with the buttercream and with the heat that would be my biggest concern. Any chance you can talk her into fondant or modeling chocolate scrolls? They're much more stable and less likely to bleed. Now for flowers...how many and how good at flowers are you? If she doesn't care what type of flowers, I would do Anemon's because they're easy, don't require special cutters and look really pretty.
The flowers are anemone's and I made them using a tutorial on youtube.
Ihttp://cakecentral.com/gallery/1591531/black-and-white-40th-bday

If you prefer to do roses, there is a great series of youtube videos on fondant roses. I put links at the bottom of this blog post
http://www.keeponcaking.com/2010/09/pleated-fondant-tutorial/

I love these roses but they take me a really long time Like 20-30 minutes per flower.

Hope this helps a little.

......have to drive about 45 minutes to an outside wedding in the middle of June... How do I make sure that my cake will hold up in travel and before it gets eaten? I should definitely assemble when i get there right?

I have no idea what the weather might be like in CO that time of the yr OR what the cake sizes/shapes will be so it most likely would be best to assemble on site You maybe could put together the two largest sizes for transporting and add the 3rd tier on site, depending on the design.
.........When I make a stacked cake the frosting from the board that sits on top always comes off with the board. What am I doing wrong?....

That's normal Put a barrier between the icing and board.....lightly coat the icing w/dried cake crumbs. Some people have said they use powdered sugar.
........any kind of dark red flowers plus they would be the topper as well. What type of flower would work best? Would it be better to do fondant flowers or buttercream? .....
What flowers do you make make best? roses most likely? Just make YOUR BEST ones. Fondant ones would hold up a bit better probably.
.........wants black scroll work.... just can't seem to picture this combining well together.........

Oh, definately it will be pretty
For the black I suggest you make a very dark chocolate b'cream icing, then add just a bit of black gel color to it. You will have to be VERY careful piping so you don't make any mistakes. Be careful the piped icing is tight/touching the cake so it doesn't fall off.

Having had a wedding caketastrophe this past August with a buttercream cake I take exception to some of the advice given.

First, what KIND of buttercream are you going to be using? If it's one using real butter you will have a huge mess trying to stack onsite unless your cake is cold and solid. Outside weddings are no place for a wedding cake that has real butter buttercream. IMO. Since I use no other I don't know how shortening based frostings hold up to handling in warm temps. I would think even crusted, they'd still be gloppy and hard to deal with. Then you have to basically decorate the whole thing onsite, right?

Overall I'd deliver a cold cake, pre-stacked and decorated with a repair kit handy for any situations that may occur. Three tiers is not that precarious if you've got the right kind of structure. And if it's cold it travels better. Blast your air conditioner all the way and make sure your cake is sitting flat on a rubber mesh drawer liner so it won't slide. I'd have it in a box that has the sides split so you can slide the cake in and out. Tape up the flaps too to make the box taller. If your box is not the same diameter as your board stick some mesh liner in the bottom of that too so it won't slide.
My caketastrophe was a 4-tier buttercream cake that unfortunately had come to room temp before delivery and it was so soft it collapsed when I turned a corner on the way to the venue. (of course it was 108 degrees outside too). If it had been cold, it would not have happened...or I would have been able to salvage it at least.
Anyway, that's my opinion on the subject. ;D

A lot - a *very* lot will depend on what your weather actually will be. I have used ABC icings (shortining-butter combined) for 100s of stacked wedding cakes and not had problems w/them with temp up to about 95 degrees F. But it's dry heat. That probably makes a lot of difference too.

The only time I made buttercream flowers for a wedding cake, they fell off the sides of the cake. The guests laughed and ate them up as they fell onto the base plate...but I never did that again.

For piped flowers, make them in royal icing. To get a decent dark red, use the old Wilton technique and paint the whole inside of your icing bag with undiluted red paste colour so that you don't have to add too much of it to the icing.

After the flowers dry, pipe a 1" long spike on the back with a small star tip and green royal icing. That will allow you to stick them into the buttercream and not have them fall out. Add the flowers and leaves onsite, you will feel a whole lot better driving the cake there.

Black scrollwork? Can you do this ahead of time in royal icing and attach onsite? That way it won't bleed...I am imagining Spanish style scrolls that make a pretty decent background for red roses. Look at books with wrought-iron artwork for ideas. Sort of like black lace but a lot stronger--use tip #6. If the tiers are round, dry the shapes on curves.
Make the black icing the same as the dark red--paint the inside of the bag with paste colour and make the icing dark grey.

Red and black are very nice colors together. I just posted a cake with a black vine and pink flowers. This kind of design would be very pretty with red flowers too.

I recently drove a 3 tier wedding cake 1 1/2 hours.
It was a square wedding cake, (in my photos) 3 shades of pink.
I was going to attempt to stack all three tiers and deliver that way, but chickened out at the last minute.
I stacked the bottom two and added the third tier at the venue.
I use crusting butter cream, with butter in my icing.

I do a lot of two tiers and two tiers are very hardy travelers. They are short and squat and if you take care of them, they are just fine.

If I were do do this cake, I would:
Do an inventory, make a check list, and check it twice....
Days before wedding:
Prepare red fondant flowers and store away until delivery.
Prepare cake boards,
mix butter cream and refrigerate.
bake cake and freeze (gasp!) Yes, freeze and move from freezer to fridge the night before you ice.

Day of wedding: Allow plenty of extra time for delivery:
Ice and fill all tiers, stack only the bottom two, prepare tiers for travel.
(I love reusable plastic totes for this reason Duff's idea, not mine!)
Prepare a black icing bag for the black scroll work you will do.
Prepare repair/tool kit for assembling at venue. (you will only be adding top tier)
(I like the plastic shoe box containers found at the dollar store for a repair kit) I will list my repair kit below.
Stack final tier, do any finishing required to present blank stacked cake.
Pipe: black scroll work on cake.
Attach fondant flowers.
Stand back and take a photo of your cake proving how it looked when you set it up.



Repair kit:
1 dollar tree plastic shoe box
Small purse size container of hand sanitizer
1 icing spatula, one zip lock bag containing butter cream, sealed (the corner can be clipped for quick filling of pastry bags)
Just two or three disposable pastry bags.
Scissors, dowels or (I use drinking straws) or supports and proper cutters. (pruning sheers for wooden dowels)
Hammer for center dowel.
Several sheets of folded viva paper towels for correcting marks in cake for when you stick your thumb in the icing!
Any pastry tips you think you might use. (better to have them and not need them, then to need them and not have them!)
damp paper towel in a sealed zip lock bag (quick clean up)
I have placed this all in a small plastic shoe box and place it in a cloth shopping bag with my camera so I can just throw it over my shoulder and carry part or all of the cake into the venue.
This is what I take with me when I deliver a cake. My rule is, If I don't take it, I will need it. If I take it, I usually don't need it but I have the tools I need.


Good Luck! You can do it!

Thanks for the tips....I am hoping for a cool day but it is usually at least 90 or so that time of year. I told my friend that i wasn't sure about doing this cake but agreed to it. I haven't done roses for a long time and hopefully i will be able to pull it together. I was trying to download the picture but i can't figure that out. Each layer has a bunch of roses and rosebuds on them and they stagger up to the next layer which eventually leads to a topper of roses. I use the wilton buttercream recipe which i use blue bonnet butter and shortening which doesn't have much of a crusting to it.

Start with your rosebuds. By the time you have done a bagful, you will be back to the swing of doing roses. Make them in different sizes for the different tiers, then the whole setup will look well proportioned.

.......The only time I made buttercream flowers for a wedding cake, they fell off the sides of the cake... guests laughed & ate them up as they fell...but I never did that again....For piped flowers, make them in royal icing.

If you look at the pix in my gallery you will see many of the 1,000s of cakes I have made - most of them b'cream creations. The problem of flowers falling off could be that your base icing was too dry and the flowers too soft. &/OR you did not put a circle of icing on the back of the flower before applying them to the cake.
RI flowers (or any decoration) would be *ROCK hard* and very unpleasent for a guest to try to eat
You can make a 'B'cream flower icing' that will air-dry enough to handle if left overnight to dry at room temp. Adding an open circle of piped b'cream to it before placing on the cake will insure that they will stay in place. &/OR some people use a toothpick stuck into the center.