A real fake wedding cake: Part 3 - Decorating

Make no mistake—one of the main purposes of decorating is to hide the mistakes from "frosting.” Another is, of course, to make your cake look nice.

Decorating principles

Photo from www.wedding-
flowers-and-reception-ideas.com

I discovered that when decorating, ribbon is your friend. Real wedding cakes often use real ribbon, or at least fondant that looks so much like real ribbon that no one will question it, so you can just buy some shiny ribbon from a crafts store and use it without bothering to make it look edible. This will cover up any imperfections in the bottom half of each tier, as well as hide the edges between tiers where the boxes doesn’t quite sit flat.

Real flowers are also a pretty easy way to decorate. In fact, if you use ribbon and flowers liberally, you could probably get away with minimal work (a couple layers of paint over a paper mache box). Ribbons and flowers are also quite easy to remove (you can tape ribbons on with painter’s tape) and then you can redecorate your cake if you don’t like it, or reuse it for another wedding.

My cake

How much ribbon will you need? A little geometry refresher

Cindy wanted the cake simple and modern-looking, so ribbons and flowers were pretty much my strategy. Fortunately, she was ok with colors being only close enough to the color scheme, so I got away with generic ribbon from the craft store. The large flower on top was fake, while the smaller orchids were helpfully provided by the florist. I had no idea what fresh flowers the florist would have and I wasn't counting on them, so they were a bonus.

Photo by Erika Jackson

Photo by Erika Jackson

Photo from weddingcakecreations.com

Play around with it

Cloth is one of my favorite things to use in decorating. It is pretty cheap and has a good elegance to effort ratio. That is, it’s easy to drape a swath of cloth over anything, and it usually looks pretty classy. Other decorating ideas might require 800% more work and give only 70% of the results. There are wedding cakes that use fondant to make cloth-like swaths, which I think looks really nice. It will also cover up a lot of imperfections on the surface of your cake. If you want to try this, you should probably pick a cloth with very fine weave, if you care to make sure it doesn’t look like cloth. Another thought is that you could spray-paint it onto the cake so that they’re all the same color and gloss.

Photo from projectwedding.com

Because I'm OCD, I went through many iterations of the spackle-sand-paint process so that the surface of my cake was smooth. If I were smarter, I would have just given up on it and gone for different decorating methods to hide parts of the surface that were pocked. Strings of pearls along the edges might have saved me a lot of spackling (and the touch-up work I had to do when I dropped one of the finished tiers corner-first). I also didn't play around with the tier placement, although it's fairly simple to experiment with that when your cake is fake. Asymmetry is interesting, whether it’s from tiers of different heights, or tiers being off center. It’s actually fashionable these days to make your cakes look crooked and crazy, as long as it looks like you meant it. I spent a lot of time perusing wedding cake galleries for ideas, although I ultimately went with a really simple style.

Other ideas

I initially thought of putting a layer of styrofoam atop each tier and squishing the edges down to round out the corners. I even bought two sheets of styrofoam from Home Depot (they were cheap). However, it would only round out the edges along the top of the cake, not the sides, and I wasn’t sure how well the styrofoam would take spackle (might rip up the foam) or paint (might corrode or just soak in) so I ended up scrapping this idea and returning the sheets. For round cakes, round styrofoam shapes might be hard to cut out as well.

It occurred to me at some point that the easiest thing to do would be to pour a ton of paint over each tier and let it dry. The thickness might be able to cover up most imperfections. I didn’t have enough paint to try this out, but it might work? Somebody try it and let me know =)

I also thought of buying clay and using it just like fondant. I would need slightly off-white clay that would air dry. The problem was that clay was relatively expensive and I couldn’t justify the cost of buying that much, especially if it didn’t work out. Small amounts would still be useful for decoration though. It looks enough like fondant that you could believe it was edible.

One last note - don't forget about the cakestand. For the most part, you can go with just a bit of aluminum under the cake, but it's going to look a bit odd if you have your supposedly-real cake sitting directly on top of the table. I left mine until the last second and had to convince my boyfriend to go out and find an appropriately sized board, cover it with foil, and bring it to the wedding. It's not hard, just one more thing to think about. Also, make sure you set up the cake before the guests arrive. Pulling it out of a box and stacking it in front of them sort of ruins the effect (although it's fun to watch their eyes bug when you put the cake away at the end of the evening).

Well, that's it for cakes for now. Alicia out.

A real fake wedding cake: Part 2 - The Process

Here is what I actually did. Later on, I have some suggestions and ideas that I tried and didn’t work, or thought of but didn’t try.

Materials

paste boxes (sometimes called paper mache boxes)

DAP DryDex 1-Pint Spackling with Dry Time Indicator

Joint knife (spackle spreader/putty knife)

BEHR Ultra with primer, matte sheen, unknown color

sandpaper

Kitty was not strictly necessary, but very cute

Prep work

First, I had to make the bottom-most tier. I found a box that was about 12” by 12” and used a boxcutter to cut off a ~7.5 inch depth. I had to tape some parts of it together (I used white masking tape) so I had to use spackle to cover up the joins.

The corners of the paste boxes were pretty sharp. I rounded them out by tapping them against the ground. If you do this forcefully but not too hard, the corners will squash down. You can spackle over the corners later to hide the crush marks, but I don't recommend trying this if you are only planning to paint.

before

after

Choosing the paint

Paints these days apparently have to have names like Super Ultra Premium Doubleplus Stupendous. Don't worry too much about it. The one I used had primer in it, which I think was helpful. The most important thing aside from the color is the sheen. Paints come in a range of sheens, from high gloss (very shiny) to flat (kinda cheap looking). I believe the names of the sheens vary as well, but you can ask whoever's working the paint counter what varieties you can get. The one that worked best for me was just a tiny bit shinier than dead flat (the Home Depot guy called it "matte"). At any rate, make sure to buy it in a sample size so you don't waste your money.

“Frosting”

I made a lot of mistakes, but in the end, the only things I really needed to do were spackle over each layer, sand it down, paint it, and repeat. The first layer of paint is essentially a “checkpoint.” Spackle is easy to sand, but that means that it is easy to chip and crack as well. Paint is harder to take off, so by painting over your work, you are essentially saving your changes. The first layer of paint will probably show some imperfections. If you can live with them, then congratulations, you’re done with the frosting! If not, apply a small amount of spackle to fill in the edges and holes and re-sand once it’s dry. Sand the spackle flush to the painted surface, then repaint. Don’t worry too much about small imperfections. You can cover them up with the decorations.

This part sounds easy, but it took me a couple of weeks of on-and-off work. The rest was easy by comparison.

Spackling a corner of the paste box cap, as a test run

It feels like frosting!

I made the corners thicker so I could sand them down

Pre-sanded cake looks pretty ugly.
Sadly, no pics of the sanded product

Finished box still doesn't hold up to close scrutiny

but looks not bad from a distance

Stay tuned for part 3: Decorating.

A real fake wedding cake: Part 1

This cake is made of spackle and paint and cost <$20 in materials
Photo by Erika Jackson

Lately, fake wedding cakes have become all the rage. Real cakes are expensive and are made to look good, but often taste lousy. With a fake cake, you can save money, AND your real cake can taste good.

My housemate Cindy got married in June and I was one of her bridesmaids. She asked if I would be able to make a fake cake for her, since I am a crafty sort, and I agreed. I looked online and most of the fake cakes I saw were fake cakes covered with real fondant or frosting. Since we both live in Washington state but the wedding was in California, this was not a very feasible solution. Besides, nobody I know knows how to make fondant, and having to learn how to cover a cake with fondant and then decorating it is halfway to just baking a damn wedding cake, so it seemed beside the point.

Since I am technically minded, I sorted out all my cake requirements and wrote them down (a cake spec).

1) easy to transport on an airplane
2) assembles on location without further decoration or frosting
3) no fake slice required (there was no official cake cutting)
4) looks modern
5) looks real

These days, it seems fashionable to make wedding cakes look fake (case in point – can you believe this cake *isn’t* made of plastic and paint? “Some people didn’t even realize it was a cake! Exactly what we were looking for!!”). This definitely worked in my favor. However, I didn’t want people to question whether the cake was real or not (since I wouldn’t have the satisfaction of telling them “Of COURSE it’s real”) so I shot for making it look as realistic as possible. I understand that this is the opposite of the goal for many bakers.

Because we had to transport the cake to California and would not have time to decorate further after arriving, we ruled out covering it in fondant or real frosting pretty early. After looking around for a while, I settled on using these paste boxes from Joann’s.

Joann’s has multiple sizes and shapes of these boxes. Just search for “paper mache box.” For mine, I used 8”, 10”, and 12” square boxes. I actually couldn't find 12” ones online and had to make it myself out of a cardboard box, further complicating things. I don’t recommend this, so if you want to make it easy on yourself, go with the round hatboxes. They are sold almost everywhere and come in a range of sizes. You could also, of course, mix and match. If you do use these boxes, inspect them before buying to make sure that your box is as square (or round) and free of imperfections as possible. It will make your life easier.

There is also a place online called Taylor Foam that sells “cake dummies,” which are professional fake cake bases. They are made of foam, pretty cheap, and come in a wide selection of sizes and shapes. You can’t get more perfect than that.

I decided not to go with the foam for a few of reasons. Firstly I wasn’t sure how I would frost over the styrofoam. Mostly it was because I wasn’t sure how long shipping would take and if I screwed up one of the tiers, I’d have to purchase another one and get it shipped again. If it came down to the wire, this would increase the chances of disaster. And a little bit of it was because it felt like cheating to buy real fake cakes. So instead I went down to my local Joann’s and bought a couple of paper mache boxes, safe in the knowledge that if things went south, I could hop on back and buy a replacement tier. The boxes also come with convenient lids which you don’t need for the cake, so they make wonderful guinea pigs for any ideas you want to try. And to top it all off, they fit Russian-doll-style into my carry-on.

This is where the OCD side of me kicked in. I wanted the cake to look like it was covered with fondant, like this.

Photo from www.wetakethecake.com

The problem with fondant is that it is very smooth, a little bit shiny, and it gives corners a rounded appearance, since it is a thick layer that goes over the cake. With a fake cake, you will typically have very sharp corners or edges on whatever box you’re using, and it will be difficult to make the surface perfectly smooth. I do not recommend trying to make your fake cake look like fondant. Maybe shoot for buttercream like this

Photo from www.reception-wedding.com

or this

Photo from www.weddingcakecreations.com

Also, lots of cakes have very sharp corners so trying to round them out is really not necessary.

Not knowing any better at the time, I decided to try to make the corners of my cake as round as I could, and make the surface as smooth and shiny as possible. For the “frosting” of my cake, I used spackle and paint. You may be able to use just one or the other. Here are the pros and cons of both.

Spackle

Pros: Spackle is fun to work with. Applying it feels satisfyingly like applying real frosting. You can use it to cover up imperfections on your cake surface. If you screw up, fear not. Spackle is easy to sand off, and you can buff out any unevenness, or use another layer to fill in any holes. After all, that is what spackle is for. A pint-size can will run you about $5 (you will probably need 2). I got a nice kind that is pink and turns white when it dries. This makes it easy to tell when it’s ready for sanding.

Cons: Spackle takes forever to apply (gets better with practice, but still). It also takes a lot of time to sand and is sanding is messy and hard work. It’s easy to use a lot of it and make your cake quite heavy. You also run the risk of the edges cracking, though you can avoid this if you are careful when handling the cake. Spackle is not really waterproof, so you have to be careful, especially if you want to use real flowers. Also, the appearance of spackle is pure, blindingly white, and a bit sandy. It does not look particularly like cake, but you can try it for yourself on a test material to see what you think.

To apply it, I used a metal putty knife. I had a plastic one but preferred the metal because it has a little flex and this makes the application easier.

Note that for spackle, you will have to either spackle the whole surface, or none of the surface. I tried spackling just the corners, sanding it down flush with the surface, and painting over the whole surface. It didn’t work because you could actually see the difference in textures underneath the paint. The part that was spackled was very smooth and the part that wasn’t was a bit rougher.

Since spackle is handy to have around, it doesn’t hurt to just buy some even if you don’t wind up using it for the cake. If you’re going to spackle, there really isn’t any reason you shouldn’t also paint. Painting is quite easy compared to spackling, and it makes your cake sturdier, more waterproof, and makes your cake any color and gloss you want.

Paint

Pros: Paint is easy to apply. It comes in many colors, and you can get it as shiny or flat as you want. A cake is small enough that you could easily cover it with a sample size can or two. One sample will run you about $3.

Cons: Paint will not cover up all the imperfections. I thought at first that by applying many layers, I could cover up all my sins. *Not* true! Also, be careful what you use to apply the paint. A cheap brush will leave brush marks, which you don’t want. I used a roller and that worked pretty well, though it had a tendency to leave tiny little holes. When choosing the gloss of your paint, keep in mind that a high-gloss, shiny paint may look pretty, but when viewed in the right light will show ALL the imperfections in the surface.

At first I tried a Glidden paint in eggshell (that’s the gloss) and it was too glossy for me, so I ended up using a Behr Ultra with primer (the equivalent of a matte finish).

Stay tuned for part 2: The Process

Goodbye to Reno: Part 2

Temporary living at the apartment

 Running up these stairs when you're late is a bitch

This library used to be a set of pharmaceutical labs.  At the pre-opening party, Irena and I got locked in one of the labs and they had to kick the door in.  That lab was torn down and became the front entrance.  The story is actually in the library's guest book.  

 This slide was the subject of an essay that  I wrote for Stanford admissions

I have taken my bike both up and down this hill.   It always seemed like a good idea at the time.

I hopped this fence every day for a whole summer

  

This is the library where I met Irena

The site of the second Dust Bowl

The big one on the right, that was us

Every time I see this gym, I hear the intro to "I Like to Move It" in my head

I have consumed at least several pounds of that fake cheese in this cafeteria

"Batman and Superman/ Can't do it like Eternal Flame can"...who wrote these lyrics??

Aren't these some of the most memorable sections of Virginia Street?

Everything in Reno is SUPER-MEGA-SLOTS

Goodbye, Reno.  It was fun while it lasted.

Goodbye to Reno: Part 1

I've lived in a lot of different places. At 7 years, Reno holds the record for any city, 13 years total if you count all the time my parents have lived there since I left for college. That's by far the longest time that my stuff has been in one place.

Come August, my brother is going away to UC Berkeley and my parents will both be living in Sacramento. I'm here for Benny's graduation and it will be the last time that I call Reno "home," in any sense.

My parents sold the house already and are renting an apartment just until Benny graduates and they can all move to California. I guess that part wasn't as much of a blow for me, since that house hasn't felt like home for a long time now.

Yesterday, I arrived in Reno and saw the temporary apartment for the first time. Ironically, it brought back a lot of memories of the temporary apartment we lived in when we first moved to Reno. Everyone is sleeping on air mattresses and living out of boxes and suitcases. My parents went and borrowed an extra air mattress just for me, and it is by far the nicest of the three. It's queen sized and even has an air-filled headboard. My brother jokingly says that it is too nice for the apartment.

90% of our stuff got moved to Sacramento already, so we are making do without a lot of the usual.  The shower curtains are garbage bags held up by clothes hangers (the kind with the clips that you use for pants). Clothes are hung out to dry on a broom handle out on the balcony. With us in the apartment are all the odds and ends that didn't quite fit in the truck. There's the keyboard I learned to play piano on, a Christmas angel decoration, a wine rack, a shoe rack. For some reason, most of our clocks are still here, making for a really high clocks-per-square-foot ratio. Fitting I guess, since the word for "clock" in Chinese sounds like the word for "ending."  There's a lot of ticking in the living room.  The sound of time passing is actually pretty loud.

Coming back from the restaurant last night, we swung by the old house at Emerald View to have a look. For my mother, it's like an ex she can't let go of. We parked at the cul-de-sac like a car full of stalkers, straining to get a look at the new residents, or see if the house has changed at all in the three weeks since they moved out. "She wants to see if the house misses her at all," cracks Benny.

Since we're in the neighborhood, we step chronologically backwards, stopping by to see all the houses we've lived in. We swing by the house at Timber Ridge, where we lived for a few short months before moving into the larger house at Emerald View. My dad feels a particular attachment to this house because we did all the landscaping ourselves. He admits to the occasional drive-by stalking to see how the shrubbery is doing. My dad laments that they haven't been feeding the bushes properly; they're still puny.

Next is the house at Moonridge Ave, my favorite. I remember it fondly as being cozy and sunny.  The neighborhood was nicely suburban, with a public park practically in the backyard. The front yard was beautifully landscaped.  To the left of the driveway was a brilliantly green lawn.  To the right was a striking design of checkered red bricks glittering white rocks, with giant rosebushes sprouting from some of the checkers. In the backyard were grape and tomato vines, apple and pear trees, as well as more grass for playing. The inside was spacious, or at least it seemed so at the time, having lived in apartments all our lives. The carpet was a cheerful shade of pink.

Sadly, the house has fallen into an awful state of disrepair. When we stopped by, the paint on the house was chipped and mostly worn off in places. The lawn was a patch of dry, packed dirt with the odd tuft of grass. The red and white checkers were completely obscured by weeds and the rosebushes were gnarly 6-foot-tall horrors with thorns. The gate to the backyard was nailed shut with planks. A Christmas decoration hung above the garage, though it was June. It hurt a little bit, but it looked so unlike the house that we had lived in that it almost didn't register.  6346 Moonridge Terrace still exists in my mind, as Photoshop perfect as ever.