Making A Wedding Cake With Butter Cream For The First Time

by Marla

Making a wedding cake with butter cream for the first time was a challenge but after many late hours and lots of tears my wedding cake with fondant grapes was a huge success!

I made your white cake and wedding cake frosting recipes and the cake tasted like a giant sugar cookie! Of course you know that! It was incredibly delicious! Thank you for sharing.

Butter cream Frosting Questions

I had no problems with the cake recipe but several with the Italian meringue buttercream frosting. So..I would like to ask you a few questions so that I may do better next time.

Your suggestion to whip the heck out of the butter to increase whiteness was wonderful!

When making the sugar/water mixture I cooked to exactly 245. When I let it cool down it started to harden so I could not use it. This time I poured it into the egg whites while it was still quite hot before it could harden and then whipped it until cooled. Seemed ok.

Then I added the butter slowly and the finished product was light, quite white and delicious. I did a crumb coat on the cakes and put them in the fridge for a bit. During this time the remaining frosting seemed to be getting so soft I was afraid it would just melt off the cake. So I put it all in the fridge for a while to firm up a bit. When I took it out to put on the final coat it seemed to be turning back into butter so I beat it again. All this liquid came out of it. Finally it seemed usable again but no longer was the beautiful, light and fluffy frosting it once was.


I was able to get the final coat on the cakes, but it pretty much looked like butter to me. Somewhere here I really messed up and went wrong. How do you use this frosting for piping and making flowers, etc with it being so soft. How do you get it to hold up in warmer weather? Should it not be refrigerated.

Fondant Grapes Question

And the grapes....they started out looking great. I got the bride's color right and the little grapes I was rolling were fine. A week before I had done a cake with multi color layered flat fondant flowers that (as per instructions) glued together with a bit of water brushed on. Worked great! So I did the same with my grapes. Let them sit over night and in the morning they just fell apart. I made a quick batch of purple royal that I tried to glue them together with. That did not work well either and the clusters fell apart again. So I gathered everything and went off to the wedding where I assembled the cake and re-glued it as best I could (praying no one would touch anything).

In The End - Huge Success!!!

The main thing is that the bride and groom and all the guests loved it.
How do you attach decorations to your frosting with it being so buttery?
Sorry I am such a dummy. I think I had better go take some classes! Wish you lived here!

Thank you so much for your help!

Marla