This past Fall, my Mom was organizing a Bridal Shower for a cousin of mine and asked if I would make a cake. So I phoned the Bride to check on her wedding colors and decided on a cute and simple design of a 7" and 4" tiered cake with white fondant, silver and black oval details with dark purple ribbon around the base of each cake. It was quite uncomplicated to decorate...but oh the buttercream issues! This was my first time using Swiss Meringue Buttercream for the filling and crumb coat on a cake, and I was not prepared for the drama!
I made the frosting a day ahead and thought I had taken it out of the fridge in plenty of time to soften before covering the cake. Apparently I tried whipping it up too soon, since it separated! I was in shock...I was decorating this cake out of town and had no ingredients to make another batch of buttercream! I made an emergency call to my sister (who had worked with Swiss Meringue before) and we figured since it still tasted really good and was spreadable, it was usable...it was just going to be a major amount of work to get the frosting smooth (when this type of frosting separates, it doesn't necessarily become soupy, but just really hard to spread). It took three or four times as long to crumb coat that cake than it should have. As a result I was up into the wee hours of the night decorating that cake. Thankfully the fondant went on without a hitch and was smooth. A rough crumb coat under fondant can make the fondant appear lumpy, which is not so pretty.
So many adventures! I had a piece at the shower the next day and it was still really tasty. Since it's not only important for a cake to LOOK good...it's got to TASTE good as well!
(I apologize for the terrible pictures...it was late, the lighting was terrible and I forgot to bring my camera to the shower the next day to take pictures)
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