Hullo

I'm currently making a drum cake which is due on Friday, its make from two 10" round cakes stacked on top of each other (separated with a cake board and supported by dowels) so it is about 6 inches high and huge! I baked the cakes yesterday so started mid-morning today I filled them with buttercream and did a crumbcoating. All wasn't too bad apart from the fact its 28 degrees here today (about 83f I think) and the buttercream was crusting quicker than normal as it was getting hot in the kitchen. So after it went in the fridge I left it to get to room temp and covered it in fondant using the mat. It started off ok but after smoothing it started cracking and looking like elephant skin. It just seemed to be drying out really quickly. So now one side of the cake looks ok-ish and the other looks awful. I've since ditched my plan of airbrushing the cake so was thinking maybe I could wrap a strip of fondant around the side in a wood colour (which was colour option no.2) but I was wondering whether it was the heat that caused my trouble and if so what can I do to avoid it tomorrow when I plan to wrap more fondant around it? I'd got a fan on in the kitchen already and theres no chance of me getting aircon as I'm in the UK and we don't normally get weather like this! I'm just worried that I have quite a few cakes coming up and really don't want this to happen again. Any help you could give would be great thank you!

Do you have a basement where it's a little cooler? I had a similar problem in May because it was so hot and our a/c wasn't working, so my fondant was just melting on me it was so soft. I ended up setting a table up in the basement and bringing everything downstairs and had a fan blowing on me. I happen to have a fridge downstairs, so I was putting my fondant covered cake in there when I was done. Yes, there was condensation on it when it came out, but as long as a I left it alone and let it come to room temp in the basement, it evaporated.

Other than that, I'm not really sure what to suggest.

If you're making your own fondant; perhaps a bit less PS in your recipe or add a little Tylose for more stiffness. HTH!!

Sorry I should have said its not home-made fondant but Regalice which I've used for months and months without any problems at all.

No sadly I don't have a basement but I might try putting the second thin coloured layer on fondant first thing tomorrow morning when its cooler and see how that goes. I don't like the fact there will be two layers of fondant but think it might be safer just to add a thinner layer on the top rather than have to go through this again. Just checked the weather and the hot spell is due to come to an end on Friday which isn't much help as the cake is being collected that day!

Thanks for your replies x