Looking online at Planet Cake's website and the blog for Happy Cakes: Little Cakes For My Happy today, I came to the conclusion that in Australia--at least in some of the bakeries--there is a difference between topsy turvy and mad hatter cakes. The North Americans sites I've looked at seem to define these cakes as being one and the same. But on these two websites I mentioned, mad hatter cakes appear to be the kind where you create an optical illusion by carving down into a cake top that's cut on an angle and actually place the cake on a flat surface. The topsy turvy cakes, however, I can't figure out how to stack. They're the ones where it looks like sugar flowers are shoved under the corner of a tier, hoisting the tier up on an angle. (I'm having a hard time describing this so if you look at the course offerings on Planet Cake's website and check out 'Basics 109' and 'Basics Masters' you'll see what I mean.) My question is: how the heck do I make that second type of cake? Is there a cake decorating book that I can buy that describes the technique? A guru who teaches it best? Thanks for your help!

Is this what you mean for the North American cakes?

http://sugaredblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Tutorials?updated-max=2009-06-07T11%3A57%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=20

nel

Ooh! That looks like the kind that Planet Cake calls topsy turvy, where the layers don't actually sit flat, differentiating it from a Mad Hatter. (Always thought they were the same thing before.) Thanks!! Looking at how the step-by-step photos show the construction, I'd think that would have a pretty good chance of sliding/falling over but I guess that's what the dowels are for. Can't really use SPS on this, can you? Thanks again!

Ooh I was wondering the same thing!! Thank you for that link! I've always tried to figure out how they did the topsy turvy look with the flowers on one side!