I want to make a 2 tiered cake for my son's birthday. I have a few questions I hope someone could help me out with. The bottom cake I wanted to make a Vanilla cake with a filling. How big of a cake pan for the bottom part, and how high do I make it? Do I need to put dowels in the bottom part to hold the top? The top part of the cake I wanted to do Chocolate with a fudge filling. What size of a pan do I use and how high?
I am going to use a boxed mix, how many do you think I will need of each flavor

Thank you so much

Michele

the size pans depends on how many people you will need to feed. I would reccomend at least 2 in difference between the two layers though. It can be as high as you want, most I would think are 3-4 inches. With only 2 tiers, you might be ok without dowel rods, but I would use them just to be on the safe side.... Hope this helps.

It depends on how many servings you need, usually the boxed mix by itself will give you enough for a 8, 9 or 10 in round torted, of course, the smaller the pan the higher the cake. If it's more than a tier you need the dowels no matter what to support the weight of the top tier. HTH. Happy baking and good luck!

I would use dowels as well but you can get away with using just your standard bamboo skewers which is what I do for two tiers that are just for family. If it's for a friend, I will use the dowels since they are reimbursing me anyway for the cost.

Most two tier cakes are at least 6" and 8" rounds which will serve up to 39 if each tier is 4" tall. I used 2 batches of kakeladi's WASC which is a doctored mix recipe when making this 7" and 9" tiered cake (and it came out pretty tall)...

http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1323390

I think two boxes of mix (that is un-doctored) should be just enough for a 6" & 8" tiered cake but you can always mix up three just to be safe and use the leftover batter for cupcakes.

HTH.

I was just at Wilton.com today to look at a cake serving guide and found that they have excellent guides for making tiered cakes. You might want to check it out. You can also find tutorials on utube. Good luck!

Wow, I love your cake, now how did you get the 2 cakes so tall?

What if I do a 10' inch bottom round and 8 inch top round. How do I get them tall like yours? Do pan's came high on the sides? I know it's a dumb question ,but I am confused?


Thank you

For that you may need 3 boxes and have to bake at least 2 cakes instead of torting them, that way you get taller cakes, my guess is that cake is 3 layer of cake and 2 of filling. d

Thanks for the compliment!

Each tier has 2 layers of cake and one layer of filling. I have 3 inch tall pans that I filled to 2/3 full with batter and after the layers are leveled, they ended up being just over 2" tall each. With filling and fondant, each tier ended up 4.5" tall.

Some people will bake up the entire thing in one pan and collar the pan (check out the how-to article under the "articles" tab above), then torte the layers but I find that dries out the cake sometimes so I prefer to bake shorter layers.

HTH.

Thank you so much everyone.