How to Tier a Cake

Hay hay hay.

So!  Now that the entire production of The Wedding Cake is over, I have some actual time to blog about it.  Huzzah!  I know professionals do this sort of thing every day without the amount of hoo-ha I’m going to make over it, but you know what?  It was a big deal.  For me.  And for Adam and Emily! 😀  So hopefully you’ll enjoy the next few weeks of wedding cake verbal diarrhea.  Isn’t that a nice mental picture?

Adam & Emily

Adam'n'Emily Gettin' Hitched!

One of the things I knew right off the bat was that we’d need a tiered cake for the wedding.  From Adam and Emily I knew there’d be approximately 100 people in attendance (with perhaps 5 or so who were diabetic and thus not partaking in the cake), and that, as per tradition, the top-most tier would be reserved for the couple’s first anniversary, so would not be part of the wedding-cake slice count.

Luckily for me, Wilton has a fabulous chart to help with figure out how many slices different cake sizes yield.  After spending a little time with the chart I decided to go with a 14″ and a 10″ cake (plus 6″ top layer), giving me approximately 91 slices of cake.  I was a little worried about cutting it close for 100 people, but decided that I’d make a separate 10″ on the side for extra slices.

Wilton's Cake Cutting Guide

Wilton's Cake Cutting Guide

After that it was just a matter of trolling the internet for how-to’s on tiering cakes.  The cool thing is that when it comes right down to it, tiering cakes is actually really easy.  For the simplest style of tiering all you need are at least two cake layers, wooden dowels, and extra frosting for touch-ups.  The dowels support each additional layer and keep the cake from caving in (onoz!).  Science!

First (obviously), bake your cakes.  Put each layer on a same-sized cardboard cake plate.

Many Cakes Handle it

Many cakes, handle it

Second, frost them.  Do both your crumb coat and second coat.

14" Frosted Cake

14" Frosted cake layer

Next it’s time to measure and cut your dowels.  I used regular wooden dowels, a Sharpie pen, and a tough pair of kitchen scissors.

For larger layers (for instance, a 10″ stacked on top of a 14″), use 4 dowels for support.  In the center of your layer gently push each dowel down to the cardboard plate.  Make sure it’s straight vertical.  Using a marker or pen, mark the dowel as close to the top of the layer as you can.  Remove the dowel and cut it at your mark.  Do the same for the other 3 dowels; make sure they’re all the same height so your second layer doesn’t sit crookedly when you stack it on top.

Dowel Measuring

Dowel measuring - you can see the blue cutting marks.

Repeat the dowel-cutting process for all your other layers, except the top one of course.  For smaller layers (for instance, a 6″ sitting on a 10″), you can use just 3 dowels.

10" Cake with dowels

10" Cake with 3 dowels cut down to size.

Once all your support-dowels are in place, stack your layers!  Try to get them as centered as possible (it helps to have a second set of eyes to help with this).

Layering the Cakes

Tiering the first 2 layers of cake.

Finally, take one longer dowel and slightly sharpen the end using a pair of scissors or a knife.  You’ll use this dowel to go through the center of all your layers and keep them from shifting or slipping around.  In my case I only put them through the bottom 2 layers; I didn’t think it was necessary to skewer the top one in with the rest (it was small, so I thought it could stay in place by virtue of frosting alone).

Skewer'd Cake

Dowel for stabilizing the first 2 layers.

Now that you have all your tiers stacked, use your frosting to pipe dots or lines around the edges of each tier to hide the differences in the layers.  Touch up all your other layers and poof- you’re done!

Piping Frosting

Piping frosting to mask the tier edges.

If you want more details, you can check out lots of other web sites to learn about cake tiering,  but I’ve found that everybody  basically says the same thing.  Here’s some of the ones that I learned from:

More wedding cake ramblings coming soon! ^_^

Mary Gezo

Formerly of both n00bcakes and !Blog, the two magically become one on Spatialdrift; expect some lazy baking and serious nerditude. Also, I love semicolons.

8 thoughts on “How to Tier a Cake”

  1. That cake looks like it was tres tres delicious. I bet there was plenty to go around, too. (Yea? Nay?) I was stunned at how little people ate at our wedding! We were eating hummus for 6 months. Go figure. 🙂

  2. ooh look how big it is! I’ve done a smaller tiered cake before and I used straws because they’re easier to snip snip with the scissors and my cake wasn’t so big that it needed wooden ones.

  3. @Anna – So true! I haven’t mentioned it yet but, despite my worries, only the bottom 14″ layer got eaten! Only 1 small piece was cut from the center 10″ layer, so Adam and Emily ended up having a lot left over. 😀

    @Stephanie – Yeah, this one was big enough to require wooden dowels, but not big enough to require big hollow plastic columns. ^_^

  4. Who are these 95 cake-eating guests that don’t finish up a center 10″ layer? Esp. when it looks so delicious?!? I could teach ’em a thing or two.

  5. CAKE! Yay, you did it!! I bet it was mighty tasty, too! I was a slacker and used straws instead of dowels because I didn’t want to deal with cutting wood. XD Wasn’t transporting it the scariest thing EVER? Such a precious couple, by the way!

  6. Oh man, yes, transportation of the cake definitely made me nervous…but what made me MOST nervous was the heat. From day one I was worried about how the frosting would hold up in the fall warmth; I had visions of the layers sliding onto the ground. @.@ Luckily, everything ended working out smashingly! 😀

    And yes…they are such an adorable couple! XD

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