I need to make a rather tall cake for 40 people of a tiki mask (see attachment) I was wondering if I should treat this like a three tiered cake, but just stack the cakes all the same size and cover with fondant and then decorate or should I make some sort of center piece and slide the cakes on them with the centers cut out? How do the cakes support themselves, do you still dowel them? What do you use for the center, PVC? Is that food safe?

Thanks for any ideas!

Wow, I am right in the middle of making one...!

Of course, my cake will certainly be nowhere near the beautiful cake you posted. I didn't know how to do this either, so I treated it as a three tier cake and put a cake board between the "layers". I made 6 6" round 2" high cakes, but didn't torte them because I was feeling quite lazy today . This cake is quite tall, about 12" and that doesn't count the 9" cake dummy underneath which adds another 4". I doweled them and even made sure the dowel went into the cake dummy. I have just finished the crumb coat. I had a devil of a time getting this puppy not to look like the leaning tower, making cake "spackle" to try to keep it level. I need leveling intervention I think! I made a paper pattern of the face which I will use to cut out the fondant as a template. I saw some really great cakes by doing a search under tiki and luau. The folks on this list are amazing!

I don't know if this helped or not...but yes, I used cake rounds every two full layers and doweled...a lot.

good luck.

Thanks for your help! I had googled tiki cakes and came up with some pretty odd images! I guess it is an odd cake to do!

I hope you will post your final photo! Would love to see how yours turns out!