I have a wedding cake order for next week where my customer would like the cake stacked so the tiers are all level at the back, making it flat, so with larger and more pronounced stepping at the front of the cake. It will be 5 tiers, 12", 10", 8", 6" and 4", with the bottom and top tiers being fake. The three cake tiers will all be sponge. I have made a dummy display cake in this way for a wedding fayre  but I've never stacked real cake in this way before and I have some concerns. The bottom 12" tier will be solid so that's fine and the top tier will be so light it won't have any impact, but the 10" tier will have to bear the weight of the 8" and 6" tiers which will be double iced so reasonably weighty. I am worried that all the weight being in one place at the back rather than centrally stacked might cause the icing to crack or that having the dowels so much closer to the edge of the cake could cause problems. Will the stacking just be the same as any other or is there anything I should be doing differently? I will use extra dowelling. I'm also a bit concerned about transporting and lifting the cake again because of the weight distribution. I did think about finishing the stacking at the venue but then if there is a problem I won't be able to do much about it and the cake will have cornelli lace so don't want to damage that with handling. My customer is happy for me to do whatever is best and will have it centrally stacked if necessary but the flat back would be much better as there are going to be two very large trailing decorations so the extra space at the front would be useful. 

Hi cleoscakes.  I just added a new pic to my gallery - it's not a perfectly flat at the back cake, but it has the deeper steps at the front like you describe as I wanted to leave room for the beautiful roses.  I dowelled as normal and just added a few extra ones closer to the back edge.  The tiers are 6", 8", 10" and 12" - all fairly weighty mud cakes filled with ganache and they were absolutely fine.  I did have them stacked separately (two stacks of two tiers) and then assembled onsite, but they held up fine.  Hope that helps!

PS - please excuse the hideous graininess of the second photo, I was cropping out the bride and groom to just show the almost flat back of the cake for you and it's gone a little blurry.

Hi - thank you so much for your reply that's really helpful. And your cakes look wonderful!!

Happy to be of assistance!   :)

And thank you so much for the lovely words!   :)

Looking forward to seeing pics of your flat back cake!