A Rustic Buttercream Roses Wedding Cake. Isn’t it pretty?
I have to tell you – setting up this cake was one of my few bad experiences with a cake. Yes, I’ve had a few.
This day, I arrived at the country club pretty happy with myself. The cake had turned out great, I was on time, and I wasn’t a basketcase nervous because this one was actually in my hometown – I deliver probably 90% of my cakes to another town about 40 miles away.
I hadn’t seen the topper until I arrived at the country club to set up, but I absolutely loved it and I just knew it was going to look perfect! And it did – until I broke it.
Yep, I broke the topper – at the country club – just hours before the wedding.
You see… the wooden “H” had been glued to a skewer so I could stand it on the cake. Except when I went to push it into the cake, the skewer was just a little too long for the tier and I couldn’t push it through the cake board without risking some serious cake damage.
I pulled it out and decided it had to be cut. Except I couldn’t find anything to cut it with. I checked everywhere… even dug through all the pockets and doors and under the seats of my truck looking for anything I could find to cut that stick. Nothing.
So I dumbly decided to break it. And I did… and it worked. Except when I snapped the skewer, the “H” went flying off across the room and broke in half. Yep – right in the middle – it was in two pieces.
I went from desperately searching for something to cut with – to desperately searching for something to GLUE with.
I knew they had nothing at the country club – I had already searched the place like crazy – so back to my truck to look for glue. And by some miracle – I remembered that I had super glue in my purse (no idea why it was there – but I was doing the happy dance).
With shaking hands, I glued the two pieces back together and finally got it to hold. Super glue doesn’t work great on wood – but I finally got it to stick and stood it up on the cake. Talk about a big sigh of relief!!
All that was left to do was contact the bride and let her know what had happened and to let her know it was fragile. You can’t imagine my relief when she was gracious and not at all upset about my big boo-boo!
My takeaway from all of this? Start adding glue, scissors and my pliers to my go-box for cake deliveries. You never know when you might need them! Ha!
Here are the details of the cake:
I think this was my smallest wedding cake to date when I made it – the tiers were 4″ round, 7″ round, and 10″ round cakes. I use Magic Line pans and highly recommend them. Each tier was 4″ tall. The top and bottom tiers were vanilla cake and the middle tier was chocolate cake.
It was filled and decorated with vanilla buttercream. The roses were piped with a Wilton 1M tip. And that’s it… did I miss any details?
Ff you have any questions about this cake – leave me a comment and I’ll do my best to answer and help out!
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Do you love rustic cakes?? Click below to get details on some others I have done:
Simple Rustic Buttercream Wedding Cake
Rustic Wedding Cake with Wafer Paper Flower
Rustic Buttercream with Pink & White Cascading Flowers
You would never know it!..Good advice 🙂
Thank you!
If anyone out there has ever wondered what the difference is between empathy and sympathy its this situation right here. While many bakers out there feel for you and understand having problems with cake deliveries, I have EMPATHY for you because almost the very same IDENTICAL thing happened to me on my very FIRST wedding cake delivery. I had already learned the hard way to take a repair kit for the cake with me on deliveries (fortunately the first bad cake delivery was at my own church, just down the street from my house and I could run back home) I too did not have one thing with me to cut a wooden dowel. I did the very same thing, I broke it. It wasn’t a great job, but thank heavens for buttercream, it hides a multitude of flaws inside the cake. My delivery was to a basement fellowship hall of a church (this happened after getting lost due to terrible directions and running late).
The only difference, I was lucky enough not to have the topper break on me. I don’t know what it looked like in person but in the picture it looks GREAT. I had to look twice to see if the rose was piped on or attached. I am curious about one thing though with this topper. I realize it’s just barely touching the top roses but my very first thought was the stain used to make the topper would bleed into the frosting. Was the topper sealed in any way? And I have to say, the ONE rose attached to it just sets the whole thing off beautifully. The plain “H” would have been nice, but dull, that one rose tied the two items together and made a much more “styled” look. And that’s all that was needed, any more and it would have looked cluttered or tacky. For a patched together job, its just lovely. If you hadn’t told us no one would know. I am glad to know I’m not the only one these crazy things happen to out there. If you were like me you were a nervous wreck by the time you got back home. I had been up much of the night before working on my cake that day and I had to have the cake an hour away at 10:00 in the morning so the day began early (who gets married at 10 am anyway?) so I went home, took a good bath to get the sugar smell and that “sticky” feel off of me (which I always seem to get after working on a large cake) and went to sleep. I probably should have had a good stiff drink too but I didn’t. I’ll remember this story for a long time, you made my day.
I never really thought about the stain on the “H”. The topper was waiting for me at the country club and I only know that they bought it at a hobby store and wanted me to put it on the cake so I did 🙂
Hey Rose, thanks for your post today! I made the rustic rosette cake for the first time last fall. Since then, it has been my #1 requested design. That makes me happy because it is so easy to decorate. Do you wait until you get to the delivery point before you put all tiers together for this cake? I have 4 tiers to deliver 2 hrs from home in September and wonder how I am going to set up without damaging the rosettes. Any suggestions?
I have always assembled at home, but the majority of my deliveries are about 45 minutes from my home. If you’re going to assemble on site, I’d recommend piping the roses after assembly – that’s how I always do it!
Hi Rose! When you deliver a cake, do you include the cake plateau and charge for it or does the customer usually supply that?
Your cakes are all beautiful!
I have one available to rent – sometimes they get it from me, sometimes they provide one.
My niece wants me to do your Rustic Roses Buttercream cake with all 3 layers done with the tip 1M roses. My question is: did you stack the layers and transport the finished product or transport the layers and decorate after you transported. I’ve baked the layers already. I did 6″, 10″ and 14″ layers.
Hi Susanne – thanks for stopping by the blog. Rose transports her cakes finished and stacked.
Rose, I meant to tell you that your cake is gorgeous. In fact all of them are. I’ve done a lot of wedding cakes since 1982. I could identify totally with your fiasco at the country club. It made me laugh. My last wedding cake was delivered to Elmwood Gardens, only 10 miles from my home. The brides Mother-in-law was the one who ordered the cake. She said her new daughter-in-law would bring the flowers and topper. I was to bring it iced and put all the decor on at the Garden. I learned a big lesson. After all these years, you’d think I’d know better. Never assume anything. Always know exactly what the topper and flowers look like. The bride brought 5 or 6 long stemmed sunflowers (artificial) and a very nice ceramic couple topper about 6″ high. Okay, I had to go around and find a grounds keeper to see if he had any wire cutters. Fortunately, the cake turned out very pretty but I was panicked pretty much before hand.
I don’t think my dilemma was quite as bad as yours. Every delivery and set-up has its challenges doesn’t it. Enjoyed your post and thank you so much for sharing.
I have a three tier first birthday cake to do in October (it’s going to be a big party) Bottom tier will be two 14″x 14″, middle two 12″x 12″ and top tier two 10″x 10″. Rosette cake. I will have two hours prior to the party to decorate the cakes, I’ve read in your responses to other comments regarding your crusting buttercream icing that you need to decorate on top of a wet crumb coat, do you think I could do the crumb coat at home then dab it with a damp paper towel to moisten it again or should I just hurry up and do the crumb coat then the rosettes when I get there? Sorry one more question, do you recommend putting rosettes under the middle and top tier or just leave that with a think layer of icing because the weight of the cakes will crush the rosettes unless my dalrods are tall enough to where the tiers don’t touch. Thanks for any feed back!