While working at Albertson’s grocery store in their bakery department, I learned how to decorate cakes. One types of cakes I learned how to make and decorate were dummy cakes for displays. The fake cakes were of various wedding cakes that we made, sold, and delivered.
Anyone that has been in a grocery, bakery or cake decorating stores more than likely has seen one of these fake cakes. They make these fake cakes for display only because they can stand up over time without losing profits on actual edible cakes.
The fake cakes take less time to make because they do not require an actual cake to bake then decorate. However, the decorating time will be about the same as any other cake.
Materials Needed for a Fake Cake
Styrofoam – The Styrofoam can be round, square or rectangular. Many times the cake decorator prefers to work with the round Styrofoam pieces to make a tiered cake for a wedding cake display. This requires less cutting of the Styrofoam.
Royal Icing – Royal Icing is an icing that hardens and sets up to last over time. Butter cream icing is not to be used for making a fake cake. This is due to the icing not holding up for a period of time like the Royal Icing.
Piping Bags and tips – Several piping bags and decorating tips will need to be used in order to create dots, borders, roses, and various other decorations on the cake.
Food coloring (Optional) – Food coloring can be used in the Royal Icing sparingly to create different colors for the fake cakes to show how it will look on the actual cake.
Spatula – The spatula will be needed to base ice the fake display with the Royal Icing.
Decorating Cake Plates and Pillars – Cake plates and pillars, such as Wilton wedding cake display, can be used to display wedding, anniversary or larger birthday cakes.
Knife (Optional) – The knife will be used if any of the Styrofoam pieces are needed to be cut down to the size of the cake needed. A cake pan can be used as the template to make the sizes needed.
Putting the Fake Cake Together
Gather all your items together for the fake cake.
Mixing the Royal Icing, recipe can be found here.
Place the pillars, if you are using them, on top of the Styrofoam and trace around them. You will need to do this in order for the pillars to be placed in the Styrofoam. If needed cut out a small section for the pillars. Use a bit of the royal icing to hold the pillars in place.
Place the tip for decorating into or onto the piping bag. Fill the bag half full of Royal Icing. Place a few dots of icing onto the cake plate. Lay the Styrofoam onto the cake plate with the drops of Royal Icing.
Use a spatula to frost the Styrofoam like a normal cake. Do each of the Styrofoam pieces this way. By the time that you have finished the last Styrofoam, the first one decorated should be dry enough to start decorating.
Decorate each cake dummy in the manner needed. Make sure that a border is placed around each of the bottoms of the fake sections to hide the space on the bottom where it was attached to the cake plate. Also pipe around the pillars to hide the placement into the Styrofoam.
Once each section is dry, assemble the tiers of fake cakes. The base area of the fake cake can be decorated with fake flowers or cloth for added beauty.
