A woman has contacted me about making a cake for her. SHe sounds absolutley loony, but it seems easy so I am going to do it. She wants a three tier off-white colored cake with any type of piping and frosting I choose.
Here's the catch, the top tier she wants it to be fake (styrofoam), and the other two real cake. Clearly she wants to feed people the cake, and I wondered how big she wanted the cakes to be so she had enough to feed everyone. She just told me enough for 250 people!!! So I have two tiers to feed nearly 300 people.
First, how big do the tiers have to be to feed that many with only two tiers?
Second, I am gonig to try and convince her to give me one more tier to work with, so If I had three tiers, how big would they have to be?

Well with only 2 tiers even the biggest cakepan which I think is the 18 inch half circles...you won't have enough for 250 people.Can you make the two bottom tiers maybe a 16 and say a 12 which will feed about 156...maybe you could convince her to have a few slab kitchen cakes for the remainder of the servings needed.Now that doesn't mean the cake should be any less in price because she wants dummies..It should be just as much.Either you do the whole thing in cake or part of it will have to be other cake servings.JMO

edited to add...If you wanted 3 tiers.. maybe even 4 so that the cake looks proportional the sizes can be....
16,14,12,8 will feed 258
16,14,12,10 will feed 272 ..these come from the wilton guide...

This is going to be one big,heavy cake!!!

Why, oh why do cake civilians think they know enough about cakes to tell the cake designer how big and how many tiers and how they want the volcano lava to flow down the side? I don't tell the seamstress how to sew or the mechanic how to fix my car.

I have no problem telling a customer that it's not really possible ... or if it is possible, it's going to look really really "funny" (ok, I admit it, I'd probably flat out say "stupid" but I was trying to be nice for a change! )

Then I tell them, "Here's what we CAN do ....."

Sounds like she'll have to also get sheet cakes from you to feed everyone. I wonder why the top has to be a dummy ? Do you think its because of cost?

Sq tiers give more servings. Does it have to be rounds? I think a 12 sq will serve 72 and a 14 sq 126 so 198 total. A 16 sq should serve about 142.
Just be sure whatever sizes you decide on that the pans will fit in your oven.

Thanks for the replies! I am just going to tell her its impossible and she needs to have sheet cakes in the back that i will gladly make for her as well to match the flavors for the tiers.

lilpinupgirl- I have no idea why the top has to be a dummy. I am almost certain it has to do with the cake topper she wants, but for whatever reason, she is very elusive on the subject. It seems a bit sketchy to me but she is my aunts boss so I dont want to give her a hard time as she seems like she will turn around and punish my aunt in the long run for it.

Lesson learned? No more cakes or "favors" for family members.