Hi All,

So I auctioned off a "dream" cake by request for a charity event at my college and the person who bought it came back with a fairly difficult request. Any help or ideas on how to execute would be awsome!

A mega, deliciously moist 6 layer cake with the following specs:
2 layers carrot cake with cream cheese frosting
2 layers german chocolate cake
2 layers strawberry

I've been given permission to be creative in execution and to change things but I'd like to stay as close to thier idea as possible

This might be a very large cake, but I can't see it as being too difficult - once you get past the fact that you have to bake three different cakes and make three different frostings. If you're worried about its stability, then shore it up with some straws. I just saw a baby shower cake on some website or other that just had filling between the layers and on the top, but with no frosting on the sides. That might be one way to go, because it might be hard to decide what flavor to frost it in. Otherwise, iust go for it - and could you e-mail me a slice? It sounds delicious.

Thanks! The idea to go with no frosting on the sides is interesting

Actually my biggest worry was that the flavors wouldn't go together or that the strawberry flavor would be lost against the richness of carrot and german chocolate. Officially I could do the strawberry layers in a non cake form (mousse? fresh? some play on strawberry shortcake? not sure). Any suggestions would be awsome

Thanks!

I think the flavors will do okay together - in a cake that tall, you can always eat them separately, if the combination doesn't convince you. I was thinking after I posted last time that you need to be careful with a cake that isn't iced, because it could dry out fast, so you might want to wrap the layers and refrigerate them until you're ready to put the thing together and deliver it. I have a great strawberry scratch WASC that I came up with by experimenting with the scratch WASC on here that I'd be happy to share with you. The strawberry flavor comes through much stronger than on most others:

Ingredients:
5 c cake flour
3 1/3 c sugar
2 tbsp + 1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt
1 cup strawberry pulp from either fresh or frozen strawberries
1 1/3 cup butter
16 oz plain (no sugar) low-fat or fat-free yogurt
1 tbsp strawberry flavoring
5 whole eggs, large

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven 350. Prepare your pans as you normally would.
2. Sift dry ingredients together into mixer bowl.
3. Add everything but eggs and mix just until combined.
4. Beat on high for 2 minutes, turn down mixer and add eggs;
  return to high and beat for another 2 minutes.
5. Pour into pans and bake for about 50 min.

This recipe makes 10 cups of batter (two 10 pans), but can be halved or
doubled (if your mixer can handle it).

I hope this goes really well for you!

Do they specifically want all six layers stacked together, so you'd have all three flavors in one piece of cake? Like a neapolitan?

Or do they mean they want a three TIER cake with each tier being a separate flavor? That would be a more normal thing to do, and a lot of people say "layer" when the mean "tier."

The tiers don't necessarily have to be different sizes, either, or stacked like a traditional wedding cake, but it will probably be easier to think of each flavor as a separate cake, and then stack or arrange them.

Maybe something like this:
http://cakecentral.com/gallery/1418341

Holly

agreed, i think you should do a 3 tiered cake as well, then the flavors are kept separate from each other, unless they really want cream cheese frosting for all the flavors. but since it's a "dream cake" i think the tiers would look nicer

If they want just one tall cake with 6 layers and 3 different flavors, I would treat each flavor as an individual cake by torting, filling and placing on a cardboard round, then stacking them on top of each other with straws to support between each cake layer. Once all three cakes are stacked, crumb coat and ice as one tall cake. I made a basketball hoop cake that way - it's a 8" 4 layer lemon cake filled and on a cardboard round stacked on top of a 8" 4 layer chocolate cake. The basketball was yet another flavor. No problem with flavors intermingling that way. Served them by deconstructing the cake the same as a tiered cake. Good luck!

Hi All,

thanks to everyone for all of your help!! The cake came out really well and was actually really fun to eat.

Marianna46 - I used your recipe (scaled back for 2 9" rounds) and it came out well though strawberry still got a little lost among the other flavors. ised a variation on a fine cooking carrot cake recipe and a variation on a cooks illustrated german chocolate cake (which i've done before) for the other layers. the cake came out to about 19" tall. I didn't ice the outside which was fun. I'll post a pic once I get it from a friend who had the camera!