jody130 – you asked for suggestions, so here are a few things I learned on this cake (and some things I’d change next time).
When you ice your tiers, don’t crumb coat the entire tier in white, do half and half. I was shocked at how much of the paper thin coat of white came through my chocolate icing, even though the chocolate was fairly thick. Mark your layers so that you ice them exactly half & half. You’ll be offsetting them when you stack. It’s not important to get the white/chocolate seam perfectly smooth because it’ll be covered with fondant (thank Heaven for small miracles).
Practice with the ganache so you’re comfortable with it. I used a small squeeze bottle to apply. You don’t want your ganache too warm or it’ll run down the side like water. In the origional pic the bride brought me, the ganache ran all the way down to the next tier most of the way around. I didn’t want mine to do that because I liked it a little more jagged.
The last thing I learned (the hard way of course), if you’re going to do the chocolate covered strawberries, use small berries. I picked the biggest ones I could find out of the container and by the time I’d dipped them in two layers of chocolate they were too big to set on the edges of the teirs. I know I’m saying a lot, but making this cake TAUGHT me a LOT. lol
