I've read all of the tutorials I can find on here about actually cutting the spiral, but I'm not sure how to actually stack it so it will be sturdy. It's going to be a fairly large cake, so I want to make sure it's not going to slip and slide! Do I do it in tiers on the cake circles and use dowels? If so, where do I get the long food safe dowels that go down through the center of the cake?

THANK YOU SO MUCH for your help!

do you have a link to a picture of a spiral cake? Or to the tutorial that you were looking at? I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about.

Oh, sorry for not being more specific. I'll see if I can attach a picture of what I'm talking about. It is one of the cakes that looks like it has a road winding up around it. When I say cutting the spiral I mean carving the road into the cake. I'm good on that (I think!). My concern is the actual stacking of the cake before I carve the road into it. I'm assuming that you would use dowels or the hollow plastic dowels just as you would if you were stacking a regular tiered cake, and then maybe one dowel down through the center of the cake when it's finished being stacked. I need to find out for sure what to do in case I need to order any materials for it. I live in a very small town and nothing other than a Michael's nearby.

Thank you! Here's a link to the cake. Sorry if It's not in here right. This is the first I've tried to add a link to a post.

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo_1462377.html

bump

Sorry I have never done a cake like that. Can't think of any tutorials I have seen either. Hopefully someone that has done it or has info will see this and point you in the right direction.

Thanks, leily. I think I'm just going to try to stack it like I normally would a tiered cake and hope for the best.

That's my cake in the picture - I carved the road on each tier before stacking. When you stack you just line up the roads so they connect, otherwise it is just stacked normally. I used bubble tea straws, cardboard circles and a center dowel on this one.

I made templates to guide my carving of each tier - a long piece of parchment paper that wrapped around the cake with the slope of the road, then a cardboard circle template for the top of the cake, to cut out the spiral shape of the road. These I then used as the base each tier sits on. You do lose a lot of servings I'm afraid, but it is a cool effect!

Oh thank you so much for replying! I thought your cake was wonderful! My next step was to PM you and see what you could tell me. Thanks for saving me a step!

http://cakecentral.com/articles/662/how-to-carve-a-spiral-cake

Here is a tutorial from CC...wasn't sure if you had seen this one.

AHere is my first attempt at a spiral cake. Didn't turn out like I wanted. I put cake boards under each cake size (6,8 10) and stacked the cakes offset. Then I carved it. I used bubble straws in the bottom two layers. When I carved the cakes the cake boards were in the way and I had to cut them out of the way. What did I do wrong? Was I not supposed to use cake boards? [IMG]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3237858/width/200/height/400[/IMG]

A[IMG]http://www.cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3297903/width/200/height/400[/IMG]

If anyone has any advice for me on making this cake, I would truly appreciate it. From the sizes of cake needed, carving, stacking, covering and pricing everything. Any and all positive feedback welcome. Thanks in advance.