You're Doing it Wrong!

Dummy Cakes are aptly named  and if only you the idiocy that seems to surround them. First off, a dummy cake is a piece of foam done up to look like a cake. They are like the bilboards for cake decorators. Let's say you just opened your first cake shop and want to showcase your speshul skillz to the average passerby. You would grab yourself some precut dummy cakes and decorate them as if they were cake. You can stack them, carve them, whatever you like! They're brilliant little things and I love them!

However, there are some rules one should follow when attempting to make a dummy cake.

Do not use buttercream icing. For the love of God and baby kittens use your not-so-common sense and THINK! When I see dummy cakes made with buttercream I die a little inside. Also, if you see one in your local cake shop you would be well advised to look for sweets elsewhere. Royal icing is not hard to make and it's something every decorator should KNOW how to make. You are supposed to use royal icing on dummy cakes, it's that simple.

Why is that you ask?

It dries hard like cement and once it is dried, your dummy cake will stay nice and pretty for much longer. The colors won't photo-degrade, the icing won't mold, you can keep it clean, and most importantly you won't have conspicuously child sized finger prints all over your advertising. Also, if you live in a hot and humid area like me, the icing won't melt.

All in all, it's just a smart thing to do.

At work, the store director asked us to make a few dummy cakes up and I told my boss flat out you need to use royal icing if you want that thing to survive. So it seems as though I will be making the dummy cakes up at home, which I don't mind. It'll be great practice working with royal icing anyway. However, there was a bit of a coincidence the other day as we recieved a call from a lady who is openning either a cake shop or a catering business and wanted us to make her some dummy cakes.

My first reaction when my boss told me this was "Yay more dummy cakes!" but then the logical part of my brain said "Hey, hold on a minute..."

This lady is starting a cake business and wants US to make HER showcase dummy cakes to show HER customers what SHE can do...but it won't be HER work they're seeing but OURS.

So we had a laugh at the WTFOMGBBQ of it and should the lady ever contact us again in regards to said dummy cakes, we will have to politely decline her request...