Hi all,

I've been looking through some tutorials on building a nice looking wine barrel cake and most of my questions are around stacking. For the barrel to look correct, it would seem that it needs to be about 1.5 times high as it is wide which is causing some problems for me in determining tier size and height.

For my particular project, the cake needs to serve 100 people and I was inclined to bake 10" cakes and stack them to about 15 inches high (for my 1:1.5 ratio) . I was planning on 3" tiers so that the ratio would be correct (5 10" cakes x 3" height).

Tier 1 - 10" x 3"height

Tier 2 - 10" x 3"height

Tier 3 - 10" x 3"height        = 15" overall height

Tier 4 - 10" x 3"height

Tier 5 - 10" x 3"height

Now here come my questions :)

1) Carving: if the widest part in the center will be 10", what should I carve the top and bottom of the cake to be? I was thinking somewhere between 7-8 inches? 

2) Covering: I was thinking of covering the fondant in 3-4" strips (vertically) to create the wood panel effect. It doesn't seem practical to try and cover the entire cake with a single sheet like I do normal round cakes.

3) Support: What's the best way to stack this cake? I exclusively use the SPS system on all of my cakes but I'm not sure that's practical here. I would hate to go back to wooden dowels and cardboard plates for support. Did I mention I have to drive 8+ hours with this cake? I have a CakeSafe so I'm not that concerned but need to make sure it's vertically strong.  I suppose if I carve the very bottom of the cake 7" then I can use a slightly bigger SPS board on top of that (maybe 8"). Not sure yet but any ideas would be appreciated here.

4) I usually cover my cakes in SMB before I apply fondant but was thinking of a coat of ganache this time around? Strips of fondant may need something more substantial to adhere to I'm guessing.

Here's a picture of wine barrel that I will use for reference: http://savorthebest.com/wine-barrel-cake/

That's all I can think of right now. Thanks for any suggestions.

-Frank

frank -- nice project there -- do you think the 1 to 1.5 ratio is off -- it's more 1 to 1.25 if you round it a bit -- the picture is 9.5 x 11 cm literally 7/8 to 1 -- and your strips of wood should be more like 1.5 inches wide in the center -- but you have to taper them of course --

yes you're right -- i think i'd stick to the 8" mark for both the top & bottom --

i use smbc for my sculptures -- ganache is great too --

i think sps would be fine -- i would use 3/4" plastic dowel -- applied correctly any dowel will work --

for delivery i would box it up nice & cold out of the fridge and seal it in the box -- add a freezer pack firmly securely inside to hold the temp and i wrap mine in a paper towel to hold condensation and then into a plastic bag -- i wire it into my boxes so it won't budge --

oh yeah -- your top & bottom tiers could be 8 - 9" cakes if you have that size pan

a 9" would be perfect -- not an 8" the 8 would make it too small