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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

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).

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!

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:

• Joy the Baker
• Wilton

More wedding cake ramblings coming soon! ^_^