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Hi, I sometimes like to cover my sponge cakes and drum board with fondant however my 8 inch round cake doesn’t sit flush on the drum board and even when I coat with buttercream then fondant I can never get a perfect perpendicular side so that my ribbon lies flat? Not sure I’ve done a good job of explaining this. This is really important as I’m doing a 2 tiered wedding cake for my nephew and I want it to be perfect. Thanks in advance for any help 🙂

Hi clan

Normally a cake drum is larger than the cake, so an 8″ cake would sit on a 10″ drum. The already decorated cake is placed on the a decorated board which has been allowed to dry overnight or like in this tutorial http://www.cakeflix.com/online-cake-decorating-courses/traditional-christmas-cake. If you look at any of the wedding cake tutorials you will see all Paul’s cakes are perfect and look beautiful. If you follow the lessons, your nephew’s wedding cakes will look very professionally decorated. The ribbons which Paul uses are 15mm, sometimes this width doesn’t quite fit flush depending on the thickness of the fondant on the board. You can also try 12mm ribbon which may fit more flush. If I’ve misunderstood your question in any way, please post again. x

Hi Clan, not sure if I’ve read your post correctly, but here goes anyway . . . . I sometimes ice my cakes on a drum of the same size as the cake (to give extra height if required) before transferring the whole lot onto a larger cake drum (as described by MIWL). I’ve never had a cake + drum that haven’t been flush. If this happens to you all the time, I would say to try a different make of drum, or really check the diameter of your cake tin, because an 8″ cake and an 8″ drum should match perfectly. The other way around it is to ice the cake (which will make it a bit wider), then place the cake on the drum and ice again (which will double ice the cake) – then transfer the whole lot onto the iced display drum. Finally, another option would be to ganache the cake instead of buttercreaming it as you can build that up in layers more easily so you can see it’s flush with the cake drum before you ice it all. Same as MIWL, if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick please post again!