Hi everyone,

I'm sure someone has already asked this question before but I can't find any answers and I'm running out of time.

So.. I've pretty much just started making cakes and I'm OK at doing 1 tiered basic cakes but when it comes to doing a 2 tiered cake it all goes horribly wrong.

I use a vanilla sponge cake recipe which I bake all the way through. Ususally for 1.5 hours at between 140 - 150 degrees. And I always check that it's cooked through. I then leave it to cool and level, fill and then crumb coat. Put it back into the fridge and then I add plastic dowels (I use the really fat boba straws as dowels) and I use about 4-5 of them. Then I apply the fondant.

When I stack the cakes they buckle and are complely ruined. I've changed my recipe/fondant/cooking time/temperature but still it goes wrong.

Can anyone give me any pointers as I have a 2 tiered cake to make in two weeks.

Thanks in advance,

Janine

The first thing is that I always insert the dowels after I've applied the fondant- that way you know where the top level of the cake is. This may be a silly question, but does your top tier have a cardboard round supporting it? Or are you just putting the cake on top of the fondant without any structure between the tiers?

Well, the biggest mistake is putting in your straws before you put the fondant on. That automatically makes the straw the wrong height - too short which puts weight on the cake itself rather than the supports. That's what causes it to buckle.

Hi thanks for the response.

Come to think about it the straws must be way too short and also - no, I've not used another board on the top tier. How thick would this need to be?

Also, I'm quite generous with my fillings. Is this likely to be another cause of my problems?

They would be very useful. I can only find them on eBay and they are in america so unless anyone knows where to buy them in the UK it's going to coast me a small fortune

They're called cake cards or boards in the UK. Thin version of a cake drum, you buy the exact size of your cake tier - check out cake-stuff.com best prices for boards, boxes, sugarpaste ect i've found in the UK.

There are a lot of great free videos on the Wilton site or youtube that teach you how to stack and dowel a tiered cake using the cake board and dowel method. I used bubble tea or even just plastic straws for smaller cakes that works well.