ok cake friends....wrap your heads around this one! I am doing a spiral cake design similar to this pic for this weekend. (Gee I love how we say "sure! I can do that!" before we really know what the heck we are doing!!)

I've got Rebecca Tanner's pictures and tutorial, but I just can't my brain around this....anyone wanna try to give me some more help?

In Rebecca's pics, the cake tier was 4 layers! Geez! looking at this wedding cake, how tall do you think each tier must be?

panic is setting in.....

hi, I dont see a pic up but most cake slices are usually 4 inches high. hth

dang why isn't the picture coming up? I hate this computer stuff.....

I give up...I can't get it to attach.....

I can't find the tutorial you are talking about, and I'm not sure exactly what part you are having trouble with, but here's a tutorial I really like:

http://cakeoricandothat.blogspot.com/2009/09/little-big-planet-cake-completed.html

This cake made so much more sense to me once I saw the triangle pattern she used around the cake to cut the spiral. Hopefully this helps a little.

I think I would do a spiral cake differently. And not by adding to the cake, but carving to remove the spiral. I can't explain this atm as I'm posting on an iPhone but basically graduated sizes of stacked tiers, carving out a half spiral ramp from each tier and lining the ramps up when assembling completely.

It's hard to explain without a sketch... but then I always do my 3d cakes by first planning on paper with several drawings!!

have you considered doing an off centre topsy turvy? not sure if that is exactly the spiral effect that you are looking for or not but that is how i did the quadding cake in my photos....

Have you seen this tutorial?

http://cakecentral.com/articles/662/how-to-carve-a-spiral-cake


The spiral shape becomes apparent once you begin the carving. I couldn't wrap my head around the carving, but once you begin, it really works.

HTH