Hi!

I have a 5-tiered wedding cake for the end of July.  It will be chocolate mud with chocolate ganache and buttercream fillings.  I'm quite confident doweling cakes and putting in a central dowel for support, but my concern is whether the support dowels in the bottom tiers will hold up with all the weight on top. The base tier is only 12" as they want a tall, narrow cake.  My estimate is that the cake will be 30-36" tall without the floral topper.  The design has all the tiers in direct contact with each other, ie no spacing or floating tiers.

I would appreciate any advice on which kind of dowels would be the sturdiest and how many to use in each of the lower tiers.

Thanks!!

Hello, can you get wooden (food-grade, not diy) or solid plastic dowels and cake hardboards (rather than cardboard circles) in Finland?

These would provide the most stable construction - I have stacked 5 tier cakes using 5 wooden or solid plastic dowels in the lower tiers, with each tier on a 3mm hardboard.  I don't centre-dowel as it isn't necessary for support and it is virtually impossible to guide a dowel through a 5 tier cake aiming it at a pre-drilled hole in the centre anyway.

hi, maybe consider cakestackers.com they have  some interesting stacking items that might help.

try cakestackers.com

Hi Suzanne!

I order most of my supplies from the UK, as Finland really doesn't have much on offer.  I do have solid plastic dowels, but have never heard of cake hardboards.  Are these the same as cake drums?

The way I centrally dowel cakes is to drill the holes in all the cards/drums before I put the cakes on them, then I thread the cakes on the central dowel from the top once the dowel is firmly screwed into the base.  This is a very narrow, tall cake which will be on display for quite a while, so I'm not confident enough to do away with the central dowel!!

Anyway, thank you so very much for your help!

Sonja

Hi Sonja

Hardboards are 3mm deep, a stronger version of a cake board or card, not the same as a 12mm drum - http://www.culpitt.com/everyday-basics/cake-cards/hardboard-3mm

Your way of centre dowelling makes perfect sense - I've been thinking of it the wrong way round but I can imagine that it would stabilise and prevent movement of the tiers, especially in such a tall cake.
 

Just looked at your Culpitt link to see what those hardboards were, and I feel mighty foolish as I have dozens of them in my stockroom right now!  *Blush*  Guess I just never paid attention to what they were called before :))