Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A
Car cake recipe for a using this as a display cake
Hi, I am soon going to be able to put some cakes into a large window display. I intend to ice some small individual cakes cooked in the individual silverwood cake tins. I also want to make the car. What recipe would anyone recommend for the largest ‘keeping’ time?
Lynda
Hi, I am soon going to be able to put some cakes into a large window display. I intend to ice some small individual cakes cooked in the individual silverwood cake tins. I also want to make the car. What recipe would anyone recommend for the largest ‘keeping’ time?
Lynda
The difficulties with any real cakes being used for display purposes are:
a. That the cakes go off
b. Colour will fade quickly (especially if you display window is south facing!)
Point B was always a consideration when taking on new shops and a few good sites fell at this hurdle because they were south facing.
With shaped cakes you probably have little choice but to use a real cake and accept that it will go off at some point. Avoid using buttercream and use as little ganache as you possibly can. There life span will depending on where they sit and the temperatures they are subjected to, but sometimes you can get away with 3-6 months. Do the ‘sniff’ test regularly. Of course if you can use dummy cakes then they will last a very long time.
Your better to have no cakes in the window than ones that are off!
Hope this helps.
Kind regards,
David
Hi Lyndaplatts
How long do you intend displaying your cakes for? Fruit cakes, as long as they are covered in either Royal icing or fondant will keep for as long as one year, this I know from personal experience. I saw the cakes which Paul has on the tutorials at the cake show and thought they were fake, but apparently not. So I am assuming for sponge, chocolate cakes, and those with density like madeira, keep the longest providing they are covered with icing. Sometime ago I also read that cakes can be freeze dried for preservation purposes, however, I have searched to find the article and can’t, also unable to give details how it is done. The cakes seen in bakery shops are dummies, they can be displayed for years and just need to be dusted to keep clean. If you are proposing to display your cakes for a very long period of time, perhaps dummies would be a more economical way to go.
