I have to make a cake for a friends two girls. They want a small topsy turvy cake that feeds 20 to 30 people. Can someone please tell me what size tiers I should use. This will be my first. Thank you.

A 6" round serves 12 and the 8" serves 24.

It kind of depends on a few things. What style of topsy turvy are you doing? If you're doing the kind where you're cutting a hole in the bottom tier, you're probably going to want to have a minimum of 6 inches for that top tier. And if you're tapering your tier, that means that the top would be about 7 or 8 inches depending on how much you'd like to taper. I tried to do a 6 to 4 taper for a cake and it completely fell apart on me. Not to mention it's kind of tough to find a 4 inch cake board. If you're not tapering, you'd want your bottom tier to be at least 3 inches bigger than the upper tier, especially if you're cutting the hole. It's needed for stability, and also, with topsy turvies it just looks better with more space. I actually do a 4 inch difference with my cakes. So, smallest topsy turvy that I was able to do was a 8inch to 6 inch and a bottom tier of 10 inches to 8 inches. I had a LOT of leftovers. lol. Good luck to you.

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She wants this cake except different colors. Thank you.

That's definitely tapered. Quite possibly 2 inches, too. There's a good tutorial on here for how to do that if you don't know how. You're looking for the method where you cut a hole in the lower tier and make sure that it's nice and flat, then settle the upper tier into the hole. If you taper down only 1 inch, you could get away with a 7 inch cake down to a 6. The lower tier will need to be at least 9 inches tapered down to 8 or 7. Not many people have odd sized pans though, so 8-6 and 10-8 is how I did my 2 tier. If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask. I'm still a novice at decorating, but I've already made 3 topsy turvies. lol. Only the 1st one collapsed, because I thought a 6-4 tapered 3 layer tier would stand on its own.... nope!

In my dvd of sugarshacks topsy turvy she did a 6 inch tapered down 1 1/2 and it worked fine...just dont cut as much off the sides and it should be ok....I am doing that this weekend and I sure hope it doesnt fall apart....make sure it is really chilled good before cutting it down.here is a great how to video