I have to agree with all of those using SPS. I used to hate doing tiered cakes because I had problems getting my dowels the exact same length. However, SPS is AWESOME! Your cakes can vary a little but I like to make mine a little over 4" so that it settles nicely.

I stack 3 tiers and travel with those and stack the rest on site. Cakes stacked using SPS have never moved 1 little bit and yes, I have ridden in the back with the cake just to make sure, especially when I first started using it. It's inexpensive and rock solid. I can't imagine trying it and then throwing it out.

it all depends on what boards you use,in australia our boards or so thick and strong nothing will pass through them, so we need to pre drill our holes and instead of pushing the dowel into the cake, have the dowel hot glued into a hole in the cake board and then you thread the cakes onto that instead, pretty sure you need to use foam boards for the method of pushing the central dowel in

tip: eaiest way to get daowels the same lenght tis to use pruning sheers to cut them (new and steralized and only used for this of course) if you rest the bade on the top of your measured dowel to cut the next they end up the same height!! and a few mm either way is fine

I think I'll try the dowel method, using the thick plastic dowels on bottom two tiers.

Once I skewer the cake tiers, how do you cover the hole in top of fondant if there is no topper or piping?

Thank you.

Great advice given here. Please let us know how things work out with this cake.

I posted the cake if anyone wants to see it. I decided to use hollow plastic dowels for the bottom three tiers, and straws for the top two. Foam core was between tiers covered in plastic wrap. I did not center dowell the cake because at the last second I freaked out and couldn't do it for fear of wreaking the cake/doing it wrong. It worked out well anyway.

Thank you again.